Queueing theory is a fascinating subject in Applied Probability for two con- tradictory reasons: it sometimes requires the most sophisticated tools of stochastic processes, and it often leads to simple and explicit answers. More- over its interest has been steadily growing since the pioneering work of Erlang in 1917 on the blocking of telephone calls, to the more recent applications on the design of broadband communication networks and on the performance evaluation of computer architectures. All this led to a huge literature, articles and books, at various levels of mathematical rigor....

It is widely recognized that the complexity of parallel and distributed systems is such that proper tools must be employed during their design stage in order to achieve the quantitative goals for which they are intended. This volume collects recent research results obtained within the Basic Research Action Qmips, which bears on the quantitative analysis of parallel and distributed architectures. Part 1 is devoted to research on the usage of general formalisms stemming from theoretical computer science in quantitative performance modeling of parallel systems. It contains research papers on...