Simulation

Editorial
Simulation: Transactions of the Society of
Modeling and Simulation International
86(5-6) 267–269
Software Tools, Techniques and ! The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/0037549710369877
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Gabriel A Wainer1 and Olivier Dalle2

In recent years, the complexity of computer simulations The paper ‘A Simulation Environment for
has increased steadily, and it is now common to see very Hierarchical Process Chains Based on OMNETþþ’,
complex software development for simulation studies.1,2 by Falko Bause, Peter Buchholz, Jan Kriege and
These tasks are particularly challenging in the field of Sebastian Vastag, introduces the use of the networking
computer systems and networking simulations.3–6 tool OMNETþþ in a different application domain:
Although there have been numerous efforts in the field process chains. The authors introduce ProC/B, a library
of modeling and simulation of computer systems and for hierarchical modeling that can be mapped into dis-
computer networks, there have been few opportunities crete-event simulation models. The idea is to map a
for researchers to discuss and highlight the main issues graphical specification model and convert it into an
they face when building new software tools, techniques OMNETþþ library for simulation purposes. The
and architectures for these applications. authors present the design of such a library, and discuss
Following the success of the first SIMUTools validation results of the transformation process.
International Conference on Simulation Tools and The article ‘Application-Level Simulation for
Techniques (Marseille, France, March 2008), and its Network Security’, by Stephan Schmidt, Rainer Bye,
follow-up editions in Rome (2009) and Malaga (2010), Joël Chinnow, Karsten Bsufka, Ahmet Camtepe and
this special issue aims at giving such an opportunity. Sahin Albayrak, presents the design of NeSSi, a net-
The idea of this issue is to provide a timely reference of work simulator that incorporates varied network-secur-
the current best practices and thus contribute to help the ity models (automated attack generators, trace analysis,
simulation community to tackle new problems and intrusion detection, etc.). The main goal is to allow
improve the current state-of-the-art techniques and network service providers to improve security through
tools. The first edition of SIMUTools received 114 sub- simulation analysis, using a library tailored specifically
missions in this field out of which 33 were accepted for for security experts and network administrators. The
publication as full papers in the conference proceedings. tool allows the user to model hierarchical networks,
The authors of the best of these papers and numerous and it provides an advanced GUI to create network
other contributions in this area were submitted to this topologies and varied scenarios. The models can be
issue. After a long review process, this double-volume executed with high performance, based on a parallel
issue includes a number of varied topics briefly summa-
rized hereafter, including a few extended versions of the 1
(Senior Member, Special Issues Editor, SCS), Associate Professor,
original papers from SIMUTools, and many other inter-
Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton
esting articles related to simulation tools and techniques. University Centre for Visualization and Simulation (V-Sim), 1125
‘A Component-Based Simulator for MIPS32 Colonel By Drive. 3216V-Sim, Ottawa, ON. K1S 5B6, Canada.
Processors’, by Yu Chen and Hessam Sarjoughian, http://www.sce.carleton.ca/faculty/wainer.html
2
introduces the use of DEVS-Suite for creating a library Maı̂tre de Conférences, Département Informatique UFR Sciences,
Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis, Laboratoire I3S - UMR CNRS
for simulation of computer architecture, based on
6070 & INRIA Sophia Antipolis Méditerranée INRIA, 2004 route des
MIPS32 processors. The authors compare single-cycle, Lucioles, BP 93, 06903 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France.
multi-cycle and pipeline MIPS 32 architectures, by http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Olivier.Dalle/
modeling them using their physical and functional archi-
tectures. Each component is built as a DEVS atomic/ Corresponding author:
Gabriel A. Wainer (Senior Member, Special Issues Editor, SCS), Associate
coupled component, and a simulation is automatically
Professor, Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton
executed based on the DEVS-Suite environment. The University Centre for Visualization and Simulation (V-Sim), 1125 Colonel
authors also discuss educational activities based on By Drive. 3216V-Sim, Ottawa, ON. K1S 5B6, Canada.
their model and tools, including an interesting survey. Email: [email protected]
268 Simulation: Transactions of the Society of Modeling and Simulation International 86(5-6)

simulation engine. The authors present interesting case References

studies based on the detection and prevention of com- 1. Railsback Steven F, Lytinen Steven L and Jackson
puter worms, and they show different projects where Stephen K. Agent-based simulation platforms: Review
this tool has been recently used. and development recommendations. Simulation 2006;
Wolfgang E. Denzel, Jian Li, Peter Walker and 82(9): 609–623.
Yuho Jin introduce their work entitled ‘A Framework 2. Gabriel A. Wainer. Editorial for recent advances in unified
for End-to-end Simulation of High performance modeling and simulation approaches. Simulation 2010; 86:
Computing Systems’, in which they present a software 3–4.
3. Thomas R. Henderson, Mathieu Lacage and George F.
tool for studying HPC systems with thousands of com-
Riley. Network simulations with the ns-3 simulator.
ponents and varied interconnects. The main problem SIGCOMM demos session 2008. Seattle, WA. http://con-
they try to address is high scalability in the simulation ferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2008/papers/p527-
of these systems, which is not straightforward. They hendersonA.pdf.
used OMNETþþ to build a library with focus on 4. Hung-ying Tyan, Ahmed Sobeih and Jennifer C. Hou.
their applications. The tool allows them to collect Design, Realization and evaluation of a component-
traces, organize the code better, and use the graphical based, compositional network simulation environment
interfaces of this well-established environment. They Simulation, Mar 2009; 85: 159–181.
introduce varied simulation results for validation pur- 5. Zeng Xiang, Bagrodia Rajive and Gerla Mario.
poses, including a discussion on parallelization of this GloMoSim: a library for parallel simulation of large-
environment to improve performance based on MPI scale wireless networks. PADS’98: Proceedings of the
twelfth workshop on Parallel and distributed simulation.
middleware.
Banff, Alberta, Canada. 1998.
‘A Network-based Simulation Architecture for 6. El Moustapha Ould-Ahmed-Vall, George F. Riley
Studying Epidemic Dynamics’ by Chung-Yuan and Bonnie S. Heck. Large-scale sensor networks
Huang, Yu-Shiuan Tsai and Tzai-Hung Wen intro- Simulation with GTSNetS. Simulation, Mar 2007; 83:
duces a network-based simulation applied to the 273–290.
study of epidemiology. The authors use a new architec-
ture based on demographics, in order to be able to run
advanced simulations applied to complex epidemics. Gabriel A. Wainer, SMSCS, SMIEEE, received M.Sc.
Their model is based on cellular automata, and it uses (1993) and Ph.D. degrees (1998, with highest honors)
spatial distribution of the entities, and their geograph- from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and
ical scale. They show the use of their tool through an the Université d’Aix-Marseille III, France. In July
example based on the SARS and HIV epidemics, com- 2000, he joined the Department of Systems and
paring the predicted simulations with the empirical data Computer Engineering, Carleton University (Ottawa,
(for validation purposes). ON, Canada), where he is now an associate professor.
Finally, the article ‘A Methodology for Solving He has held positions at the Computer Science
Logistic Optimization Problems through Simulation’, Department of the University of Buenos Aires, and vis-
by Mercedes Narciso, Miquel A. Piera and Antoni iting positions in various places (the University of
Guasch, introduces a methodology for decision- Arizona, LSIS (CNRS), the University of Nice and
making analysis in logistics, based on simulation INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, France). He is the author of
and optimization. The authors propose to define dis- three books and over 200 research articles, has edited
crete-event models using colored Petri nets (CPN), four other books, and helped organize over 90 confer-
and their application to logistic problems (which, ences, including being one of the founders of the ICST
being NP-hard, can be studied through simulation SIMUTools Conferences (program co-chair in 2008,
methods). The idea is to first model the system as a general co-chair in 2009, and steering committee
discrete-event model, specifying the resources needed, member since 2009). He was PI of different research
queues, delays, etc. The method they propose allows projects and is a recipient of various awards (NSERC,
one to convert this model into a CPN, and do reach- Precarn, Usenix, CFI, CONICET, ANPCYT,
ability analysis using standard tools. Then, an opti- CANARIE, IBM Eclipse Innovation). He is the special
mization algorithm is applied to the reachability tree, issues editor of the Transactions of the SCS, associate
trying to find optimal solutions through different heu- editor of the JDMS (Journal of Defense Modeling and
ristics. They show the feasibility of their proposal Simulation), a member of the editorial boards of
through an interesting case study on job-shop Wireless Networks and the International Journal of
operations. Simulation and Process Modeling. He has been a
We would like to thank the valuable work by all the member of the board of directors of the SCS, and a
authors, the numerous reviewers, and, in particular, the chairman of the DEVS standardization study group
authors, for their hard work in preparing this issue. (SISO). He is director of the Ottawa Center of the
Editorial 269

McLeod Institute of Simulation Sciences and chair of doctoral fellow at the French Space Agency center
the Ottawa M&SNet, and one of the investigators in the in Toulouse (CNES-CST), where he started working
Carleton University Centre for advanced Simulation on component-based discrete-event simulation of
and Visualization (V-Sim). His current research inter- multi-media telecommunication systems. In 2000, he
ests are modeling methodologies and tools, parallel/ was appointed to UNS, and he joined the
distributed simulation and real-time systems. MASCOTTE research group, a joint team of UNS,
CNRS and INRIA. His current research interests in
Olivier Dalle is Maıˆtre de Confe´rences (associate pro- discrete-event simulation are on methodology sup-
fessor) in the Computer Sciences department of the port, very large-scale networked systems, and wireless
Faculty of Sciences at the University of Nice-Sophia communication systems. He was one of the founders
Antipolis (UNS). He received his B.Sc. from the of the ICST SIMUTools Conferences (program co-
University of Bordeaux 1 and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. chair in 2008, general co-chair in 2009, and steering
from UNS. From 1999 to 2000, he was a post- committee member since 2009).