Pre-sampling as an approach for exploiting temporal uncertainty

We describe an approach to exploit temporal uncertainty in parallel and distributed simulation by utilizing time intervals rather than precise time stamps. Unlike previously published work that proposes new message ordering semantics, our approach is based on conservative, time stamp order execution and enhancing the lookahead of the simulation by pre-drawing random numbers from a distribution that models temporal uncertainty. The advantages of this approach are that it allows time intervals to be exploited using a conventional Time Stamp Order (TSO) delivery mechanism, and it offers the modeler greater statistical control over the assigned time stamps. An implementation of this approach is described and initial performance measurements are presented.