A Distributed Architecture for Simulation Environments Based on Game Engine Systems - Visual Computing: Scientific Visualization and Imaging Systems - page 44

Fig. 2.3 Single-thread
uncoupled model
Monkkonen states that this model is limited by the amount of available pro-
cessing cores, and the parallel task should have little dependency on each other.
The Asynchronous Function Parallel Model [ 12 ] is the formalization of the idea
found in [ 11 ]. This model does not present a main loop. Figure 2.6 illustrates the
model.
Different threads run the simulation tasks by themselves. The model is cate-
gorized as asynchronous because the tasks do not wait for the completion of other
ones to perform their job. Instead, the tasks use the latest computed result to
continue processing. For example, the visualization task would use the latest
completed physics information to draw the objects. This measure decreases the
dependency among tasks. However, task execution should be carefully scheduled
for this scheme to work nicely. Unfortunately, this is often out of the scope of the
application. Also, serial parts of the application (like rendering) may limit the
performance of parallel tasks [ 11 ].