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School of Computer Science
The SysMoS Team
Systems, Models
and Simulation
"For
everything that exists there are three things through which knowledge about
it must come; the knowledge itself is a fourth; and as a fifth we must
posit the actual object of knowledge which is the true reality. We have
then:- first, a name; second, a description; third an image; fourth knowledge
of the object ? There is, for example, something called a circle, whose
name is the very word I just now uttered. In the second place there is
a description of it, made up of nouns and verbs. The description of the
object whose name is round and circumference and circle would be: that
which has everywhere the same distance between the extremities and the
middle. In the third place, there is the object which is drawn and erased
and turned on the lathe and destroyed - processes which the real circle,
in relation to which these other circles exist, can in no wise suffer,
being different from them. In the fourth place there are knowledge and
understanding and correct opinion about them, all of which must be posited
as one thing more, inasmuch as it is found not in sounds nor in the shapes
of bodies but in soul, whereby it manifestly differs in nature both, from
the real circle and from the aforesaid three. Of these, understanding approaches
nearest to the fifth in kinship and likeness, while the others are more
distant ? Every circle drawn or turned on a lathe in practice abounds in
the opposite to the fifth-for it everywhere touches the straight, while
the real circle, we maintain, contains in itself neither more nor less
of the opposite nature. The name, we maintain, is in no case stable; there
is nothing to prevent the things now called round from being called straight,
and the straight round; and those who transpose them and use them in the
opposite way will find them no less stable than they are now"
Plato, Epistle, vii, 342A-343B
Overview, Research Interests and Opportunities
The SysMoS research team operates within the wider umbrella of the Modelling
and Simulation of Systems Group at the School of Computer Science,
University of Birmingham, U.K.
The activities of the team are currently centered around the following
areas:
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Computer architectures - in particular asynchronous hardware systems.
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Computer Networks
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Parallel and distributed systems
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The Grid
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The modelling and simulation of large complex systems such as computer
architectures, agents, networks and telecom systems, engineering and manufacturing,
business processes etc.
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Distributed Simulation on various parallel platforms including the Grid,
cluster computers and networked environments
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Fundamental research on algorithms for Monitoring, load balancing, synchronisation
and interest management for distributed simulations
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Federated and Large Scale Distributed Simulation (HLA/RTI).
We are always open for external collaborations and joint research projects.
People
Faculty
Staff
Students
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Mr. Tonworio Oguara
, PhD student (PhD studentship, Load Balancing in Distributed Simulations)
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Mr
Ming Jang, PhD student (ORS PhD studentship, Grid-aware large
scale distributed simulation)
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Ms
Qian Zhang, PhD student (ORS PhD studentship, Design of Asynchronous
Architectures)
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Mr Mike Lees, PhD student,
University of Nottingham (PDES-MAS project)
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PhD vacancy
Projects
Links and Sources
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The University of Birmingham Information
Services Digital Unix Systems (ISDU)
High
Performance Computing Service
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HLA
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Parallel And
Distributed Simulation Links (NTU/Gintic,
Singapore)
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Simulation Bookmarks
(Calgary)
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Parallel Simulation
in ACE (Vienna)
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Parallel
and distributed Simulation at Georgia Tech.
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Parallel Simulation
in Exeter
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Parallel Simulation at UCLA
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Distributed Systems Laboratory
at Calgary
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Organizations and Working Groups
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Some tutorial papers:
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Parallel Discrete Event Simulation, Richard Fujimoto, Communications of
the ACM, October 1990.
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Parallel Discrete Event Simulation: Will the Field Survive?, Richard Fujimoto,
and the following commentary by leading experts, ORSA Journal of Computing,
5(3), 1993.
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Parallel Simulation Today, David Nicol and Richard Fujimoto, Annals of
Operations Research, December 1994.
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Parallel and Distributed
Simulation of Discrete Event Systems, Alois Ferscha and Satish K. Tripathi,
CS-TR-3336, University of Maryland, August, 1994. (A later version appeared
as a chapter in Parallel and Distributed Computing Handbook, Ed: A. Y.
H. Zomaya, McGraw-Hill, 1995.)
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Asynchronous
Parallel Discrete Event Simulation, Yi-Bing Lin and Paul A. Fishwick,
CIS-TR-95-005, University of Central Florida. Also appeared in the IEEE
Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernatics, Vol 26, No.4, 1996.
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Parallel and Distributed Simulation, Richard Fujimoto, Proceedings of the
1995 Winter Simulation Conference.
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TWarp Kernels
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WARPED: The University of
Cincinnati (MPI, Workstation networks)
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Georgia
Tech Time Warp ( shared memory multiprocessors such as the SparcStation
and SGI PowerChallenge, and heterogeneous networks of workstations including
multiprocessor workstations).
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Time Warp project in University
of Waikato, New Zealand, ( Work is being done on a high performance
implementation of Timewarp on a shared memory processor. They use the Uni
of Calgary kernel.)
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University of Calgary
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The Time Warp Operating
System - NASA (The Time Warp Operating System, in version 2.7.1, is
available by anonymous FTP from file://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/ficus/reiher/tw.tar.Z.
-This file is around 11M, compressed. It includes not only Time Warp, but
a sequential simulation engine with a compatible interface, several sample
simulations, and some tools. TWOS is one of many implementations of the
Time Warp concept. It contains advanced features not available in most
other versions of the system. For example, it contains the option to use
either lazy or aggressive cancellation, dynamic load management, dynamic
object creation, and dynamic memory allocation. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
where TWOS was developed, it has been ported to a distributed network of
Suns, as well as parallel computers including the BBN GP1000, the Intel
Delta, and the Cray T3D.)
Contact
Dr Georgios K. Theodoropoulos
School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham
Tel: +44-121-414 4780
Fax: +44-121-414 4281
email: gkt@cs.bham.ac.uk
