The local Time Warp approach to parallel simulation

Abstract

The two main approaches to parallel discrete event simulation – conservative and optimistic – are likely to encounter some limitations when the size and complexity of the simulation system increases. For such large scale simulations, the conservative approach appears to be limited by blocking overhead and sensitivity to lookahead, whereas the optimistic approach may become prone to cascading rollbacks, state saving overhead, and demands for larger memory space. These drawbacks restrict the synchronization schemes based on each of the two approaches from scaling up. A combined approach may resolve these limitations, while preserving and utilizing potential advantages of each method. However, the schemes proposed so far integrate the two views at the same level, i.e. local to a logical process, and hence may not be able to fully solve the problems. In this paper we propose the Local Time Warp method for parallel discrete-event simulation and present a novel synchronization scheme for it called HCTW. The new scheme hierarchically combines a Conservative Time Window algorithm with Time Warp and aims at reducing cascade rollbacks, sensitivity to lookahead, and the scalability problems. Local Time Warp is believed to be suitable for parallel machines equipped with thousands of processors and thus an appropriate candidate for simulation of large and complex systems.