Zero Energy Synchronization of Distributed Simulations

The question of the energy consumed by synchronization algorithms for distributed simulation programs is addressed. The concept of zero energy synchronization is introduced wherein a distributed simulation program incurs no additional energy cost for synchronization. A theoretical approach to achieving zero energy synchronization using an oracle is described. An energy efficient implementation of the YAWNS algorithm, termed Low Energy YAWNS (LEY) is presented. It is shown that LEY can yield, in principle, zero energy synchronization for many classes of applications. Preliminary experimental results are presented showing that LEY achieves significantly less energy consumption compared to a conventional implementation of YAWNS that does not consider energy use as a design goal. Further, these experimental results indicate that LEY achieves energy consumption only modestly greater than that of an execution of the same application using an oracle for the test cases that were examined. These results suggest that it may be feasible to develop practical distributed simulation synchronization algorithms that approach zero energy synchronization.