CORBA-based, multi-threaded distributed simulation of hierarchical DEVS models: Transforming model structure into a non-hierarchical one

Abstract

The Discrete Event Systems Specification (DEVS) formalism specifies a discrete event system in a hierarchical, modular form. This paper presents DEVSCluster, a CORBA-Based, multi-threaded distributed simulation scheme for models specified by the DEVS formalism. The simulator transforms a hierarchical DEVS model into a non-hierarchical one. This transformation can ease the synchronization of the distributed simulation of DEVS models by enabling the transfer of events by direct remote method invocations, not explicit message transfers. By virtue of this feature, we can utilize CORBA for the event handling in DEVSCluster. To show the effectiveness of the proposed simulation scheme, we realize DEVSCluster in Visual C++, and conduct a benchmark simulation for a large-scale logistics system. We compare the performance of MPI and CORBA-based implementations. The performance result shows that the proposed methodology works correctly and performs better than the previous approaches. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.