Off-loading data distribution mananagement to network processors in HLA-based distributed simulations [mananagement read management]

The high level architecture (HLA) standard developed by the Department of Defense in the United States is a key technology to perform distributed simulation. Inside the HLA framework, many different simulators (termed federates) may be interconnected to create a single, more complex simulator (federation). Data distribution management (DDM) is an optional subset of services that controls which federates should receive notification of state modifications made by other federates. A simple DDM implementation usually generate much more traffic than needed, while a complex one might introduce too much overhead. In this work, we describe an approach to DDM that delegates a portion of the DDM computation to a processor on the network card, in order to provide more CPU time for other federate and RTI computations, while still being able to exploit the benefits of a complex DDM implementation to reduce the amount of information exchange.