Applying a scalable CORBA event service to large-scale distributed interactive simulations

Next-generation distributed interactive simulations (DISs) will have stringent quality of service (QoS) requirements for throughput, latency and scalability, as well as requirements for a flexible communication infrastructure to reduce software lifecycle costs. The CORBA event service provides a flexible model for asynchronous communication among distributed and collocated objects. However, the standard CORBA event service specification lacks important features and QoS optimizations required by DIS systems. This paper makes five contributions to the design, implementation and performance measurement of DIS systems. First, it describes how the CORBA event service can be implemented to support key QoS features. Second, it illustrates how to extend the CORBA event service so that it is better suited for DISs. Third, it describes how to develop efficient event dispatching and scheduling mechanisms that can sustain high throughput. Fourth, it describes how to use multicast protocols to reduce network traffic transparently and to improve system scalability. Finally, it illustrates how an event service framework can be strategized to support configurations that facilitate high throughput, predictable bounded latency, or some combination of each.