Some Properties of Events Executed in Discrete-Event Simulation Models

Abstract

The field of computer architecture uses quantitative methods to drive the computer system design process. By quantitatively profiling the run time characteristics of computer programs, the principal processing needs of commonly used programs became well understood and computer architects can focus their design solutions toward those needs. The DESMetrics project is established to follow this quantitative model by profiling the execution of Discrete Event Simulation (DES) models in order to focus optimization efforts within DES execution frameworks (and especially parallel DES engines). In particular, the DESMetrics project is designed to capture the run time characteristics of event execution in DES models. Because DES models tend to have fine grained computational processing requirements, the DESMetrics project focuses on the event dependencies and their exchange between the objects in the simulation. For now, we assume that optimization of the actual event processing is well served by conventional compiler and architecture solutions. Although, as will become clear later in Section 6, the possibility of identifying scheduling blocks of events that could potentially be schedule together can be achieved - at least within a single simulation object.