HLA-based optimistic synchronization with SLX

The High Level Architecture for Modeling and Simulation (HLA) comes with the promise of facilitating interoperability between a wide variety of simulation systems. HLA's time management offers a unique support for heterogeneous time advancement schemes and differentiates HLA from other general interoperability standards. While it has been shown that HLA is applicable for connecting commercial off-the-shelf simulation packages (CSPs), the usage of HLA time management in this application area is virtually always limited to conservative synchronization. In this paper, we investigate HLA's capabilities concerning optimistic synchronization. For the first time, we show its use in combination with a commercial-off-the-shelf simulation package (CSP), namely the simulation system SLX. We report on implementation details, performance results, and potential limitations in the current HLA 1516.1-2010 standard and its interpretation by runtime infrastructure (RTI) software vendors.