Leveraging Time Prediction and Error Compensation to Enhance the Scalability of Parallel Multi-Core Simulations

Abstract

Due to synchronization overhead, it is challenging to apply the parallel simulation technique of multi-core processors at larger scales. Although the use of lax synchronization schemes could reduce overhead and balance the load between synchronous points, it introduces timing error and deteriorates simulation accuracy. Through observing the propagation paths of errors, we find that these paths always concentrate on some pivotal events. Based on the observation, we design a delay-calibration mechanism to alleviate errors. We decouple the timing and functional processes of the pivotal events, leveraging prediction technique of delays to connect two categories of the processes. Errors are traced throughout the timing processes of the pivotal events, and are deducted from the predicted delays before the delays are consumed by the functional processes. Therefore, through cleaning the errors at the successive pivot events, the mechanism decreases the simulated time deviations efficiently. Since the prediction and error deduction processes do not have any constraint on synchronizations, our approach largely maintains the scalability of lax synchronization schemes. Furthermore, our proposal is orthogonal to other parallel simulation techniques and can be used in conjunction with them. Experimental results show that error compensation improves the accuracy of lax synchronized simulations by 68 percent and achieves 97.8 percent accuracy when combined with an enhanced lax synchronization.