Real Time Speed of a Conservative Parallel Simulation

Abstract

This paper examines the real time speed of the conservative  parallel simulation of a telecommunications network. Real time speed is defined as the ratio of the simulated time to the execution time. A generic simulation model of SS7 networks is executed under the conservative mechanism. A technique used to secure a stable lower bound on the  speed of the SS7 simulator is introduced and analyzed. Using this technique  simulation models ranging in size, from 16 to 64 nodes, are executed on similarly sized and  configured transputer networks. Empirical data on the real time performance of the system are presented. The results confirm that under the given conditions, the performance boundaries of the simulator are both stable and scalable: independent of work load density and size of the modeled network, simulation of a given period of model activity can be guaranteed within a predetermined period of real time.