Transparent and Efficient Shared-State Management for Optimistic Simulations on Multi-core Machines

Abstract

Traditionally, Logical Processes (LPs) forming a simulation model store their execution information into disjoint simulations states, forcing events exchange to communicate data between each other. In this work we propose the design and implementation of an extension to the traditional Time Warp (optimistic) synchronization protocol for parallel/distributed simulation, targeted at shared-memory/multicore machines, allowing LPs to share parts of their simulation states by using global variables. In order to preserve optimism's intrinsic properties, global variables are transparently mapped to multi-version ones, so to avoid any form of safety predicate verification upon updates. Execution's consistency is ensured via the introduction of a new rollback scheme which is triggered upon the detection of an incorrect global variable's read. At the same time, efficiency in the execution is guaranteed by the exploitation of non-blocking algorithms in order to manage the multi-version variables' lists. Furthermore, our proposal is integrated with the simulation model's code through software instrumentation, in order to allow the application-level programmer to avoid using any specific API to mark or to inform the simulation kernel of updates to global variables. Thus we support full transparency. An assessment of our proposal, comparing it with a traditional message-passing implementation of variables' multi-version is provided as well.