Parallel Vehicular Traffic Simulation using Reverse Computation-based Optimistic Execution

Vehicular traffic simulations are useful in applications such as emergency management and homeland security planning tools. High speed of traffic simulations translates directly to speed of response and level of resilience in those applications. Here, a parallel traffic simulation approach is presented that is aimed at reducing the time for simulating emergency vehicular traffic scenarios. Three unique aspects of this effort are: (1) exploration of optimistic simulation applied to vehicular traffic simulation (2) addressing reverse computation challenges specific to optimistic vehicular traffic simulation (3) achieving absolute (as opposed to self- relative) speedup with a sequential speed equal to that of a fast, de facto standard sequential simulator for emergency traffic. The design and development of the parallel simulation system is presented, along with a performance study that demonstrates excellent sequential performance as well as parallel performance.