Parallel simulation of queueing networks: limitations and potentials

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Abstract
This paper concerns the parallel simulation of queueing network models (QNMs) using the conservative (Chandy-Misra) paradigm. Most empirical studies of conservative parallel simulation have used QNMs as benchmarks. For the most part, these studies concluded that the conservative paradigm is unsuitable for speeding up the simulation of QNMs, or that it is only suitable for simulating a very limited subclass of these models (e.g., those containing only FCFS servers). In this paper we argue that these are unnecessarily pessimistic conclusions. On the one hand, we show that the structure of some QNMs inherently limits the attainable simulation speedup. On the other hand, we show that QNMs without such limitations can be efficiently simulated using some recently introduced implementation techniques. We present an analytic method for determining an upper bound on speedup, and use this method to identify QNM structures that will exhibit poor simulation performance. We then survey a number of promising implementation techniques, some of which are quite general in nature and others of which apply specifically to QNMs. We show how to extend the latter to a larger class of service disciplines than had been considered previously.

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