Load balancing in parallel battlefield management simulation on local- and shared-memory architectures

    Authors

    N. Deo; M. Medidi;S. K. Prasad

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Comput. Syst. Sci. Eng.

    Keywords

    load balancing; static and dynamic allocation; battlefield management; simulation; parallel time-driven simulation; Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture; Computer Science, Theory &; Methods

    Abstract

    Load balancing is a critical issue for exploiting parallelism in any application and, particularly, in battlefield management simulation where the computational load dynamically changes with both time and space. Domain decomposition is an effective means to balance the load distribution in battlefield simulation. However, finer domain decompositions that lead to a better load balance incur heavier communication overhead. Earlier attempts at parallelizing battlefield simulation have traded load balance in favor of low communication overhead. We present three parallel battlefield management simulators, implemented on Intel's iPSC/2 and BBN's GP1000 multicomputers, with finer domain decomposition and address the communication overhead problem by processor allocation strategies that suit the underlying architecture of each machine. On the shared-memory GP1000, the strategy leads to a simulator with dynamic load balancing. Execution times of these simulators are provided, which show that the communication overhead is tolerable. Relevant details of the programs, data structures, and synchronisation mechanisms are included. The timing data collected have also been analyzed using Mathematica to obtain relative significance of the various simulator parameters and their interactions.

    Journal Title

    Computer Systems Science and Engineering

    Volume

    13

    Issue/Number

    1

    Publication Date

    1-1-1998

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    55

    Last Page

    65

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000072237700007

    ISSN

    0267-6192

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