Contention problem of a multiprocessor simulator

Abstract

With the increase in the scope of simulation, more minicomputers are used by military and industrial real-time simulators. The performance degradation caused by contention among computers is therefore becoming more acute. The problem will be even more serious when a network of distributed microcomputers is to operate the real-time simulators. In an effort to estimate the contention degradation apriori, a recursive relationship linking the effective worth of a multiprocessor structure consisting of k+1 processors to that of k processors has been obtained. The computational results have been favorably compared to the measured values. The relationship has since been used to help select most cost-effective computer systems for real-time simulators.