A good review of ten simulation tools for parallel and distributed systems is presented in this paper. The reviewed systems are: SimOS, SimJava, NS-2, Parsec, GloMoSim, Bricks, GridSim, MicroGrid, SimGrid, and Ptolemy II. The paper can be used as a handy reference for these simulation systems.

The title of the paper is misleading, however, and the taxonomy of computer-based simulations is sketchy. Furthermore, no references to previously developed simulation taxonomies are presented. Some terminology is incorrect. For example, “event-driven discrete-event simulation” is a tautology, and is incorrect. The dichotomy of “entity-based” and “event-based” modeling frameworks is misleading, and is inconsistent with discrete-event simulation formalism. “Programming framework” discriminates only structured and object-oriented programming. The proposed taxonomy for system support is also very coarse, and describes only code generation, debugging, statistics generation, and validation tests.

Despite its shortcomings, this review of simulation tools will be useful, and is recommended for simulationists active in parallel and distributed simulation.