%L eprints2601 %A Mirco Tribastone %A Stephen Gilmore %A Jane Hillston %V 38 %N 1 %D 2012 %I IEEE Computer Society %K Markov processes; Modeling and prediction; ordinary differential equations %R 10.1109/TSE.2010.82 %P 205-219 %X The exact performance analysis of large-scale software systems with discrete-state approaches is difficult because of the well-known problem of state-space explosion. This paper considers this problem with regard to the stochastic process algebra PEPA, presenting a deterministic approximation to the underlying Markov chain model based on ordinary differential equations. The accuracy of the approximation is assessed by means of a substantial case study of a distributed multithreaded application. %J IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering %T Scalable differential analysis of process algebra models