Synchronization Methods for Distributed Agent Based Models *

Distributed computing facilitates very large scale agent-based models. However, reliable and efficient communication strategies are needed to synchronize agent states across multiple processors. Traditional management methods are conservative in nature and perform a complete synchronization of all agent state information at every time step of the simulation. An alternative approach to traditional methods is proposed which uses an event-driven technique to synchronize agents. This procedure only synchronizes changes to pertinent information in the model at each time step. This technique requires less information to be broadcast which reduces the run time of the simulation while maintaining consistency in the model.