A taxonomy of computer‐based simulations and its mapping to parallel and distributed systems simulation tools

Abstract

In recent years, extensive research has been conducted in the area of simulation to model large complex systems and understand their behavior, especially in parallel and distributed systems. At the same time, a variety of design principles and approaches for computer‐based simulation have evolved. As a result, an increasing number of simulation tools have been designed and developed. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to develop a comprehensive taxonomy for design of computer‐based simulations, and apply this taxonomy to categorize and analyze various simulation tools for parallel and distributed systems. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

SEED: A Scalable Approach for Cyber-Physical System Simulation

“…Simulations that imitate the behavior of physical systems larger than what is available to hand are particularly effective, however they incur a slowdown with respect to time. Current state-of-the-art approaches claim that slowdown of 100x relative to real system operation is acceptable for reasonable interactivity [5]. Utilizing lower fidelity models to achieve improved scalability and performance results in a degradation of overall simulation accuracy with respect to the real system.…”

“…A common approach to managing these simulations is through the use of Parallel Discrete Event Simulation whereby a simulation is partitioned across a set of compute nodes and is managed through discrete timesteps and message passing through events generated from each partition [37]. An effective means to mitigate scalability issues in simulating CPSs is to decompose the simulation into smaller physically distributed logical units, and can be achieved through the use of high power tightly-coupled systems [14] [15] or large-scale distributed infrastructure configured to facilitate specific simulation [5] [19]. However, there are a number of challenges which reduce the effectiveness of such approaches.…”

(GbL #2) Constructive Simulation as a Collaborative Learning Tool in Education and Training of Crisis Staff

“…There are different categorizations of simulation systems (Sulistio, Yeo, & Buyya, 2004). In military training and education, there is a commonly used classification based on the complexity, used methodology and level of objectives (Hodson, 2009):…”

Adaptive workflow simulation of emergency response

“…The results gathered from the simulation indicate how the real system behaves, thus enabling researchers to understand and improve on their design without the actual implementation." (Sulistio, Yeo, & Buyya, 2004) The TAID project, as a consequence, is developed using the system focus, but also addresses the validity issues often seen within this approach by grounding the simulation in practice.…”

“…Simulation environments have been categorized based on: the degree in which they rely on empirical data instead of hypothetical assumptions and the generalizability of their results (Brenner & Werker, 2007); their theoretical basis (Crystal & Ellington, 2004); their application area, usage taxonomy, simulation taxonomy and design taxonomy (Sulistio et al, 2004). When applied to the use of simulation in the social sciences, Gilbert & Troitzsch (2005) point out that simulation types can be categorized using four characteristics: the number of levels that can be modelled in the simulation, the number of agents in a simulation, the complexity of the agents, and if communication between agents is possible or not.…”