A study of achievable speedup in distributed simulation via NULL messages

The results of an experimental study on distributed simulation of three open queuing networks are reported. The distributed simulation scheme considered is a simple variation of the scheme given by K.M. Chandy and J. Misra (1979) using NULL messages. A new approach is used to study the relationship between the overhead and performance of a distributed simulator, and the approach is illustrated by studying these three example networks. Two measures of ideal speedup of distributed simulation over sequential simulation are defined and measured. These values of ideal speedup are much less than simply the number of processors, and hence provide a more realistic value for the ideal speedup