Patent 7571088 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on August, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Simulating device interactions. A method may be practiced in a computing system for simulating interconnected devices. The method of simulating device interactions may be done in performing an overall transaction to obtain an output of system performance characteristics including measurement of latencies and/or device loads for actions performed by devices in performing the overall transaction. The method includes dividing a transaction into individual actions. The actions are applied to appropriate device models to produce latencies and/or device utilizations for the action as applied to the appropriate device model. This may be done by including an indication of an action type and optionally an action subservice. Memory resources may be conserved by ending the simulation when latencies and/or device utilizations have settled. Device utilization and latency may be aggregated and averaged over time. When changes in the latencies and/or device utilizations are within a predetermined range, the simulation can be ended.