SKaLib: SKaMPI as a library

SKaLib is a library to support the development of benchmarks.
It offsprings from the SKaMPI-project. SKaMPI is a benchmark to
measure the performance of MPI-operations. Many mechanisms and
function of the SKaMPI-benchmark program are also useful when
benchmarking other functions than MPI's. The goal of SKaLibis to
offer the benchmarking mechanisms of SKaMPI to a broader range
of applications. The mechanisms are: precision adjustable
measurement of time, controlled standard error, automatic
parameter refinement, and merging results of several
benchmarking runs.

This documents fulfills two purposes: on the one hand it should
be a manual to use the library SKaLib and explains how to
benchmark an operation. On the other hand this report
complements the SKaMPI-user manual. The latter report explains
the configurations and the output of SKaMPI, whereas this
reports gives a detailed description of the internal data
structures and operations used in the SKaMPI-benchmark.

There is also a scientific section which motivates and describes
the algorithms and underlying formulas used by SKaMPI.