Abstract

This paper describes the Time Warp Operating System, under development for three years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the Caltech Mark III Hypercube multi-processor. Its primary goal is concurrent execution of large, irregular discrete event simulations at maximum speed. It also supports any other distributed applications that are synchronized by virtual time. The Time Warp Operating System includes a complete implementation of the Time Warp mechanism, and is a substantial departure from conventional operating systems in that it performs synchronization by a general distributed process rollback mechanism. The use of general rollback forces a rethinking of many aspects of operating system design, including programming interface, scheduling, message routing and queueing, storage management, flow control, and commitment. In this paper we review the mechanics of Time Warp, describe the TWOS operating system, show how to construct simulations in object-oriented form to run under TWOS, and offer a qualitative comparison of Time Warp to the Chandy-Misra method of distributed simulation. We also include details of two benchmark simulations and preliminary measurements of time-to-completion, speedup, rollback rate, and antimessage rate, all as functions of the number of processors used.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.