Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Hardware
platforms
Parallel
computers
Distributed
computers
Shared
memory
Distributed
memory
SIMD
machines
Networked
workstations
Figure 3.1:
Taxonomy of important classes of parallel and distributed
computers [36].
as either distributed computer (because of the use of common-of-
the-shelf network hardware) or as parallel computer (because of the
close physical proximity of the machines) [36, p. 18f.]. The following
definitions are used in this thesis:
Definition 9 (Parallel simulation)
Parallel simulation
refers to
the concurrent, independent execution of a simulation model using
multiple threads, processors or computing nodes. Within this thesis,
this term does
not
refer to the time-parallel execution of multiple
independent simulations.
Definition 10 (Distributed simulation)
Distributed simulation
refers to the execution of a simulation model using multiple, distributed
computing nodes. Usually the overall simulated model consists of
multiple interconnected simulation models executed by the available
computing nodes.
Parallel simulation is usually considered for improving performance
of the simulation execution (i.e., to reduce runtime) or for increasing
reliability of the simulation environment [49]. The common focus
of distributed simulation is to couple existing simulators. Therefore,
