The Cost of Terminating Optimistic Parallel Discrete-Event Simulations

In a previous paper, we proposed seven algorithms for mechanically adding an arbitrary termination condition to a conservative-synchronous, non-terminating parallel simulation. Informal arguments about the performance of each algorithm were made, and the arguments were confirmed through measurement for four of these algorithms. The benchmark used was the simulation of a Torus network using the Bounded Lag protocol on a shared memory multiprocessor. In this paper, we report on the performance of the simulation of the same Torus network benchmark with the same four termination conditions using an optimistic protocol on a message-passing multiprocessor. We also report on the performance of a colliding pucks simulation with three additional termination conditions.