Technical Articles

The Use of Computing Clusters and Automatic Code Generation to Speed Up Simulation Tasks

By Jason R. Ghidella, Amory Wakefield, Silvina Grad-Freilich, Jon Friedman, and Vinod Cherian, MathWorks


This paper presents techniques that can be used to reduce the time needed to run block diagram simulations. The first is automatic code generation, used to create simulation executables from graphical block diagram models. Several approaches are described that highlight the tradeoff between increases in simulation speed and interactivity with the graphical model. This paper illustrates the stages of modeling and simulation at which code generation should be considered. The second technique presented is the use of computing clusters to distribute simulation runs across a number of processors. With the advent of the multicore processor, this technique has become accessible to many more engineers than in the past.

This paper was presented at the AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference.

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Published 2007