Switching to High Gear: Opportunities for Grand-Scale Real-Time Parallel Simulations

The recent emergence of dramatically large computational power, spanning desktops with multi-core processors and multiple graphics cards to supercomputers with 10⁵ processor cores, has suddenly resulted in simulation-based solutions trailing behind in the ability to fully tap the new computational capacity. Here, we motivate the need for switching the parallel simulation research to a higher gear to exploit the new, immense levels of computational power. The potential for grand-scale real-time solutions is illustrated using preliminary results from prototypes in four example application areas: (a) state- or regional-scale vehicular mobility modeling, (b) very large-scale epidemic modeling, (c) modeling the propagation of wireless network signals in very large, cluttered terrains, and, (d) country- or world-scale social behavioral modeling. We believe the stage is perfectly poised for the parallel/distributed simulation community to envision and formulate similar grand-scale, real-time simulation-based solutions in many application areas.