Survey of languages and runtime libraries for parallel discrete-event simulation

To develop a parallel discrete-event simulation from scratch requires in-depth knowledge of the mapping process from the physical model to the simulation model, and also a substantial effort in coping with the numerous issues concerning the underlying synchronization protocols in use Languages and libraries could reduce the development effort significantly by providing the use with a pre-built parallel simulation kernel as well as application development tools. This paper contains a survey of the existing languages and libraries for parallel discrete-event simulation. It is divided into two major sections: one on the languages, the other on the libraries. The discussions are mainly focused on the following aspects: user model, programming framework and language features, library API, protocols, and system support and environment. The reported performances of some packages are also summarized.