Fast cell level ATM network simulation

This paper presents performance results for cell level ATM network simulations using both sequential and parallel discrete event simulation kernels. Five benchmarks are used to demonstrate the performance of the simulation kernels for different types of model. The results demonstrate that for the type of network models used in the benchmarks, the TasKit simulation kernel is able to outperform all of the other kernels tested both sequentially and in parallel. For one benchmark TasKit is shown to outperform a conventional sequential simulation kernel by a factor of 3. For the same benchmark TasKit is shown to outperform the best of the other parallel kernels tested by a factor of 6. The paper explains how this performance advantage is achieved and cautions that additional research into automatic model partitioning will be essential to make this technology accessible to the general simulation community.