Performance Analysis of Shared Data Access Algorithms for Distributed Simulation of Multi-Agent Systems

Distributed simulation is an important instrument for studying multi-agent systems (MAS). Such large scale MAS simulations often have a large shared state space. Moreover, the shared state and the access pattern of agent simulations both are highly dynamic and unpredictable. Optimising access to the shared data is crucial for achieving efficient simulation executions. PDES-MAS is a framework for distributed simulation of MAS, which uses a hierarchical infrastructure to manage the shared data. In order to enable agent simulations to access distributed shared data efficiently, this paper proposes two routing algorithms, namely the address-based routing and the range-based routing. The paper introduces a meta-simulation approach to evaluate the characteristics of both solutions and provides a quantitative comparative analysis of the proposed algorithms.