Designing a benchmark for the performance evaluation of agent-based simulation applications on HPC

Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) is a class of computational models for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents with the goal of assessing their effects on a system as a whole. Several frameworks for generating parallel ABMS applications have been developed taking adva...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Moreno Vendrell, Andreu, Rodríguez Guerra, Juan José, Beltrán, Daniel, Sikora, Anna, Jorba, Josep, Cesar, Eduardo
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Repositorio:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
OAI Identifier:oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/93171
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10609/93171
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:agent-based modeling and simulation
parallel applications
performance
benchmark
aplicaciones paralelas
comparativa
rendimiento
modelo y simulación basados en agentes
modelització i simulació basada en agents
aplicacions paral·leles
rendiment
Computer simulation
Simulació per ordinador
Simulación por ordenador
Descripción
Sumario:Agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) is a class of computational models for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents with the goal of assessing their effects on a system as a whole. Several frameworks for generating parallel ABMS applications have been developed taking advantage of their common characteristics, but there is a lack of a general benchmark for comparing the performance of the generated applications. We propose and design a benchmark that takes into consideration the most common characteristics of this type of applications and includes parameters for influencing their relevant performance aspects. We provide an initial implementation of the benchmark for FLAME, FLAME GPU, Repast HPC and EcoLab, some of the most popular parallel ABMS platforms, and use it for comparing the applications generated by these platforms. The obtained results are mostly in agreement with previous studies, but the designed and implemented specification has allowed for testing a wider set of aspects, such as the number of interacting agents, the amount of interchanged data or the evolution of the workload and obtaining more reliable results.