Synchronization methods in parallel and distributed discrete-event simulation

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis work attempts to provide insight into the problem of executing discrete event simulation in a distributed fashion. The article serves as the state of the art in Parallel DiscreteEvent Simulation (PDES) by surveying existing algorithms and analyzing the merits and drawbacks of various techniques. We discuss the main characteristics of existing synchronization methods for parallel and distributed discrete event simulation. The two major categories of synchronization protocols, namely conservative and optimistic, are introduced and various approaches within each category are presented. We also present the latest efforts towards PDES on emerging platforms such as heterogeneous multicore processors, Web services, as well as Grid and Cloud environment.Ó 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Parallel discrete-event simulationWith the computing power and advanced software available today, modeling and simulation has become a cost-effective tool for detailed analysis of a broad array of natural and artificial systems. Parallel and distributed simulation is widely accepted as the technology of choice to speed up large-scale discrete-event simulation and to promote reusability and interoperability of simulation components. Parallel Discrete-Event Simulation (PDES) has received increasing interest as simulations become more time consuming and geographically distributed. A rich literature has already been developed in the last three decades, taking advantage of the increasing availability of highly parallel and distributed computing platforms. It has been several years since the last survey by Perumalla [5] and a refreshed review of the latest developments would be needed for us to ponder new research initiatives, especially on emerging platforms such as many-core processors, Internetscale simulation environments, and cloud-based virtualized infrastructures.In parallel and distributed simulations, the entire simulation task is divided into a set of smaller subtasks with each executed on a different processor or node. Hence, the simulation system is viewed as a collection of concurrent processes, each modeling a different part of the physical system and executing on a dedicated processor in a sequential fashion. These processes communicate with each other by exchanging time-stamped event messages. An event refers to an update to simulation system state at a specific simulation time instant. Throughout the simulation, events arrive at destination processes, and depending on the delivery ordering system of the simulation, they are processed differently. The two commonly used orderings are (1) receive-order and (2) timestamp-order. With the first type, events are delivered to the destination processes when they arrive at the destination. On the other hand, with the timestamp-order, events are delivered in non-decreasing order of their timestamp, requiring runtime checks and buffering to ensure such ordering.1569-190X/$ -see front matter Ó

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“…Time management is much researched in this domain (e.g. [8], [9]), and two main approaches are considered: optimistic and conservative.…”

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“…The first phase (lines [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], finds the next event to be processed, as follows. First, for each incoming channel, the first message that is not canceled by a later anti-message in the channel, is retrieved by means of the function RetrieveMsg.…”