Enabling massively parallel, ad hoc exploration of the design space for simulation models within a serverless environment

Abstract

This paper presents a massively parallel, cloud-computing framework for the ad hoc evaluation of discrete-event simulation (DES) models to enable broad exploration of the design space for model parameters. Parallel evaluation is enabled through use of a serverless computing environment allowing thousands of simultaneous experiments, on demand, without the need to explicitly provision or manages hardware. A standard Simulation Evaluation application programming interface (API) was designed for evaluating simulation functions that enables language independence between client application and simulation model, encouraging reuse of simulation models for multiple purposes (what-if analysis, ranking and selection, sensitivity analysis, or optimization). Extensions to the Java Simulation Library (JSL)27 enable rapid deployment of models built with the JSL as parameterized serverless functions implementing the Simulation Evaluation API. New Java packages facilitate the calling of any serverless functions that implement the Simulation Evaluation API.