Abstract :
A class of Petri nets called high-level algebraic nets is studied. Attention is focused on ECATNets (extended concurrent algebraic term nets), a kind of high-level algebraic Petri net with bounded capacity places. Three distributed simulators are presented that are able to simulate ECATNet models: asynchronous conservative, asynchronous optimistic and synchronous. The influence that factors such as the characteristics of the simulated models, their initial partitioning, the organisation of the simulators and the characteristics of the target multicomputer have in the performance of the simulations have been measured and characterised. Experiments are reported that have been executed with those simulators, with the aim of characterising how the partitioning of the ECATNet model, the synchronisation strategy and the ways of organising the simulator influence the achieved performance. It is concluded that distributed simulation of ECATNets on a multicomputer system can in fact gain speedup over the sequential simulation, and this can be achieved even for small scale simulation models. An analysis of the results allows the suggestion of suitable combinations of algorithms to efficiently carry out simulations of ECATNet models.
