Science Daily wrote that "researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created the fastest detailed computer simulations of computer networks ever constructed."
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created the fastest detailed computer simulations of computer networks ever constructed -- simulating networks containing more than 5 million network elements.
This work will lead to improved speed, reliability and security of future networks such as the Internet, according to Professor Richard Fujimoto, lead principal investigator of the DARPA-funded project (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
First, what does mean "simulating a network"? It means you need to model the individual data packets traveling over the network. Anytime you read a web page, many data packets are transmitted.
So, what did these researchers? They designed a new computer simulation method two to three orders of magnitude faster than previous ones. Unfortunately, they didn't provide the details of the implementation. But numbers are impressive.
The Georgia Tech researchers have demonstrated the ability to simulate network traffic from over 1 million web browsers in near real time. This feat means that the simulators could model a minute of such large-scale network operations in only a few minutes of clock time.
Using the high-performance computers at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the Georgia Tech simulators used as many as 1,534 processors to simultaneously work on the simulation computation, enabling them to model more than 106 million packet transmissions in one second of clock time -- two to three orders of magnitude faster than simulators commonly used today. In comparison, the next closest packet-level simulations of which the research team is aware have simulated only a few million packet transmissions per second.
If you have more details about this new computing simulation method, please send me your comments.
[Note: The original news release from the Georgia Institute of Technology was published on August 7, 2003.]
Source: Georgia Institute of Technology, via Science Daily, August 12, 2003
12:21:06 PM
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