In: Bruzzone, A.G.; Kerckhoffs, E.J.H.: Proceedings of the 8th European Simulation Symposium (ESS '96), Vol. I, Genoa, Italy, pages 96-100. Society for Computer Simulation International, October 1996.
Abstract: In this paper, we identify the problems which arise for distributed simulation of model classes with particular critical timing requirements (e.g. queuing networks with minimum service time zero or Petri nets with zero-timed transitions) and show that standard conservative or optimistic approaches will fail for these models. We show further, that a modification of the relationship between model time and simulation timestamps can improve this situation.
However, by this modification it is only possible to guarantee a correct distributed simulation for critical models, but not a fair one, i.e. not all final states defined for a particular critical model are actually reachable by a distributed simulator. We show that this problem is inherent to distributed simulation and conclude that distributed simulation is not suitable for some model classes with particular timing requirements.
We illustrate our considerations by a simulation algorithm for timed Petri nets, which are easily able to express properties critical to distributed simulation as fairness, concurrency, and causal dependence.