University of Canterbury Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering

Project Akaroa

CSSE Home

Features of Akaroa2©

  • Works on existing simulation programs

    Any simulation program that can be linked with a library of C routines can be easily adapted to run under Akaroa2©. There is no need for any special parallel programming techniques.
  • Speedup approaching linear in the number of processors used

    Processors running the simulation communicate only with a central controlling process and not with each other, so there is no synchronisation overhead to limit parallelism.
  • Real-time simulation data output analysis

    Sophisticated and thoroughly tested statistical methods are used to continously analyse the precision of simulation output data as it is generated.
  • Automatic run length control

    The user specifies the required precision and confidence level of the simulation results, and Akaroa2© automatically runs the simulation for long enough to produce those results. There is no need to guess the required run length in advance.
  • Fault tolerance

    If processors are lost during a simulation, the simulation continues with the remaining processors. New processors can be added to a running simulation at any time, to replace lost processors or further speed up the simulation.
  • Portable to most variants of Unix

    Implemented in the GNU dialect of C++, Akaroa2© has been tested at Canterbury under SunOS 4, Solaris 2 and Linux. Porting to other Unix variants is expected to be straightforward.
  • Can be used with other simulation packages

    Akaroa2© can be used to control simulations built using other simulation packages. Interfaces currently exist for Ptolemy Classic, the Network Simulator NS2, and OMNeT++. Download the interfaces here.

 

Last modified:  23 Jun 2013