Data dissemination techniques for distributed simulation environments

Farm is a distributed simulation environment for modeling the performance of large-scale multiagent systems. It uses a component-based architecture to distribute the computational load of the simulation and improve running time. It also supports a global data repository, which permits both actors running in the simulator and external analysis components to generate and use arbitrary pieces of information. Because the components are distributed, the manner in which this data is accessed can have significant effect on the communication overhead and duration of the simulation. In this paper we explore several different techniques for accessing and disseminating this data. Analytic and empirical models of the system's performance are presented, along with an analysis of which strategy is appropriate under different conditions.