An Object Description Language for Distributed Discrete Event Simulations

Abstract

Digital simulation is a useful tool for developing a better understanding of real world systems. It has been used with great success since the advent of the digital computer in such varied fields as weather prediction, planning military operations, and training. As digital computers become more capable and network communications systems more prevalent, the notion of synergistically combining the two to perform distributed simulation has led to some tremendous improvements in simulation speed and fidelity. This talk describes a new programming language that it is hoped will be of use in easily creating a distributed discrete event simulation without burdening simulation system developers with the difficult and often error-prone task of synchronizing nodes in a distributed simulation. The developer can instead focus on specifying the behavior of the objects in the virtual environment with little need to focus on the lower level concerns such as synchronization. The language structure follows the notions of a stimulus-response system and completely isolates simulation object instances from each other. Inter-object communication occurs solely through the use of message passing.