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Distributed Simulation on a Many-Core Processor

Authors:
Karthik Manian
Philip Wilsey

Keywords: Parallel and Distributed Simulation, Time Warp, Many-core processors.

Abstract:
Parallel Discrete Event Simulation (PDES) using distributed synchronization supports the concurrent execution of discrete event simulation models on parallel processing hardware platforms. The multi-core/many-core era has provided a low latency ``cluster on a chip'' architecture for high-performance simulation and modeling of complex systems. A research many-core processor named the Single-Chip Cloud Computer (SCC) has been created by Intel Labs that contains some interesting opportunities for PDES research and development. The features of most interest in the SCC system are: low-latency messaging hardware, software managed cache coherence, and (user controllable) core independent dynamic frequency and voltage regulation capability. Ideally, each of these features provide interesting opportunities that can be exploited for improving the performance of PDES. This paper reports some preliminary efforts to migrate an optimistically synchronized parallel simulation kernel called warped to an SCC emulation system called Rock Creek Communication Environment (RCCE). The warped simulation kernel has been ported to the RCCE environment and several test simulation models have also been ported to the RCCE environment. Based on initial efforts, some preliminary insights on how to exploit some of the exotic features of SCC for increasing the performance of PDES applications is noted.

Pages: 32 to 37

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: October 23, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4537

ISBN: 978-1-61208-169-4

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from October 23, 2011 to October 29, 2011