Title :
A Message-Based Approach to Discrete-Event Simulation
Author :
Bagrodia, Rajive L. ; Chandy, K. Mani ; Misra, Jayadev
Author_Institution :
Department of Computer Sciences, University of Texas at Austin
fDate :
6/1/1987 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
This paper develops a message-based approach to discrete-event simulation. Although message-based simulators have the same expressive power as traditional discrete-event simulation lanuages, they provide a more natural environment for simulating distributed systems. In message-based simulations, a physical system is modeled by a set of message-communicating processes. The events in the system are modeled by message-communications. The paper proposes the entity construct to represent a message-communicating process operating in simulated time. A general wait until construct is used for process scheduling and message-communication. Based on these two notions, the paper proposes a language fragment comprising a small set of primitives. The language fragment can be implemented in any general-purpose, sequential programming language to construct a message-based simulator. We give an example of a message-based simulation language, called MAY, developed by implementing the language fragment in Fortran. MAY is in the public domain and is available on request.
Keywords :
Discrete-event simulation; distributed system; entity; message; message-based simulation; Computational modeling; Computer languages; Discrete event simulation; Packaging machines; Power system modeling; Trademarks; Virtual manufacturing; Discrete-event simulation; distributed system; entity; message; message-based simulation;
Journal_Title :
Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TSE.1987.233203