Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Executable model
Simulation results
«Software»
Simulation engine
Execution
control
Data
structures
Simulation
clock
Simulation
infrastructure
Operating system
Hardware
Figure 2.2:
Components of a simulation infrastructure.
internal algorithm. The simulation engine together with necessary
computing hardware and operating system is referred to as simulation
infrastructure:
Definition 4 (Simulation infrastructure)
The term
simulation
infrastructure
refers to the entirety of hardware and software (op-
erating system as well as simulation engine) necessary to execute a
simulation model.
Figure 2.2 ilustrates the components of a simulation infrastructure.
Using an analogy from a different area of computer science, the
terms simulation and simulation engine may be explained as follows:
Given an unsorted list, it may exactly be defined what is understood by
sorting
this list. However, sorting may be done by any sort algorithm,
like bubblesort or quicksort. No matter which sort algorithm is used
after its execution the list is sorted. Similarly, a simulation may be
executed by different simulation engines. The important point is that
the result is the same no matter which simulation engine is used, i.e.,
identical simulation results are produced.
