Lowering entry barriers to developing custom simulators of distributed applications and platforms with SimGrid

Henri Casanova, Arnaud Giersch, Arnaud Legrand, Martin Quinson, Frédéric Suter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Researchers in parallel and distributed computing (PDC) often resort to simulation because experiments conducted using a simulator can be for arbitrary experimental scenarios, are less resource-, labor-, and time-consuming than their real-world counterparts, and are perfectly repeatable and observable. Many frameworks have been developed to ease the development of PDC simulators, and these frameworks provide different levels of accuracy, scalability, versatility, extensibility, and usability. The SimGrid framework has been used by many PDC researchers to produce a wide range of simulators for over two decades. Its popularity is due to a large emphasis placed on accuracy, scalability, and versatility, and is in spite of shortcomings in terms of extensibility and usability. Although SimGrid provides sensible simulation models for the common case, it was difficult for users to extend these models to meet domain-specific needs. Furthermore, SimGrid only provided relatively low-level simulation abstractions, making the implementation of a simulator of a complex system a labor-intensive undertaking. In this work we describe developments in the last decade that have contributed to vastly improving extensibility and usability, thus lowering or removing entry barriers for users to develop custom SimGrid simulators.

Original languageEnglish
Article number103125
JournalParallel Computing
Volume123
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2025

Keywords

  • SimGrid
  • Simulation of distributed computing systems

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