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ScipySim: Towards Distributed Heterogeneous System Simulation for the SciPy Platform

Allan McInnes and Brian Thorne

Symposium On Theory of Modeling and Simulation - DEVS Integrative M&S Symposium (TMS/DEVS 2011)
Boston, MA, USA, April 4-9, 2011


Summary

The goal of the ScipySim project is to develop a distributed heterogeneous system simulation capability for the SciPy scientific computing platform. It began as an experiment in implementing Caspi et al.'s generalized Kahn theory for executable heterogeneous system semantics. Instead of using a centralized simulation engine, ScipySim simulations are composed of autonomous actors that interact by passing tagged events through first-in/first-out queues. The resulting decentralized simulation system is, in principle, well-suited to distributed execution. However, in practice, simultaneously achieving efficiency and liveness proves to be difficult. We describe the current design of ScipySim, some of the difficulties we have encountered in implementing a simulator using the generalized Kahn approach, and plans for the future.


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