LOOKING GLASS: A HYBRID SIMULATION SYSTEM TO MODEL CASCADING EVENTS WITHIN A BLACK BOX SYSTEM

• US 20130085740A1
• Filed: 09/14/2012
• Published: 04/04/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/03/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Levine, David W., Tanenblatt, Michael A., Booch, Ernest G., Coden, Anni R.
• Granted Patent: US 8,498,850 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 703/17
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 30/20 Design optimisation, verification or simulation optimisation, verification or simulation of circuit designs G06F30/30

Abstract

A hybrid simulation system to model cascading events within a black box system may include a tessellated field operable to allow a plurality of black box components to execute on a processor and communicate without needing a direct connection between the black box components. The black box components have transfer functions defined over a common coordinate system and time.

Claims

1. A hybrid simulation system for modeling cascading events within a black box system, comprising:

a tessellated field representing coordinates for the black box system and operable to allow a plurality of black box components to execute on a processor and communicate without needing a direct connection between the black box components; and

a choreographer module operable to manage and synchronize running of the plurality of black box components via the tessellated field over time, the black box components having transfer functions defined over a common coordinate system and time.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of black box components are pluggable into the system and playable.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the tessellated field includes tessellated analytical field.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the black box components communicate with one another through a tessellated field only.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the plurality of black box components are adaptive black box components.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein data associated with one or more of the adaptive black box components can be modified during execution.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein time synchronization between the black box components is achieved solely through the tessellated field.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is re-used in multiple scenarios wherein input data to the black box components change.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein anomalous behavior in the one or more of the plurality of black box components is discovered and issued as alerts.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein visualization semantics are output for generating visualization of the interactions of the plurality of black box components via a graphical user interface.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the tessellated field is initialized with data associated with the black box system, including specification of the plurality of black box components and a scenario the black box system is simulating.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the tessellated field is updated with data associated with additional one or more black box components that are plugged into the system.

13. A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of modeling cascading events within a black box system, comprising:

receiving a scenario description, the scenario description including coordinates of the black box system, specification of a plurality of black box components associated with the black box system;

building a tessellated field associated with the black box system based on the received scenario description, the tessellated field representing coordinates for the black box system;

running a simulation scenario by executing the plurality of black box components over a simulation time period, the black box components having transfer functions defined over a common coordinate system and time, the black box components communicating only through the tessellated field without needing a direct connection between the black box components; and

updating the tessellated field with results of the simulation.

14. The computer readable storage medium of claim 13, further including:

generating visualization and statistical data based on the updated tessellated field, wherein the generated visualization and statistical data is transmitted to a graphical user interface module for presentation to a user.

15. The computer readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein the tessellated field is updated over the simulation time period and wherein one or more of the black box components are executed using the updated tessellated field over the simulation time period, the tessellated field being further updated in accordance with output generated by the plurality of black box components over the simulation time period.

16. A computer readable storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform a method of modeling cascading events within a black box system, comprising:

receiving a scenario description;

configuring a tessellated field representing coordinates of the black box system based on the scenario description and specifications of a plurality of black box components associated with the black box system; and

running a simulation scenario by executing the plurality of black box components, the black box components having transfer functions defined over a common coordinate system and time, the black box components communicating only through the tessellated field without needing a direct connection between the black box components, the running a simulation scenario comprising at least,

initializing a clock to time T;

retrieving data available from one or more of the plurality of black box components;

resolving conflict, if any, in the received data;

storing the data in the tessellated field;

performing one or more analytic functions, if any, associated with the one or more of the plurality of black box components from which the data is retrieved;

updating the tessellated field with one or more results of the performed one or more analytic functions;

applying one or more rules associated with the one or more of the plurality of black box components from which the data is retrieved;

updating the tessellated field with one or more results of the applying of the one or more rules;

executing one or more user actions, if any, received from a user via a computer user interface module;

updating the tessellated field with one or more results of the executing of the one or more user actions;

incrementing time T by a time unit; and

repeating the steps of retrieving, resolving, storing, performing, updating, applying, updating, executing, updating and incrementing until simulation is ended.

17. The computer readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the tessellated field is multidimensional spatial coordinate representation of the scenario being simulated, the tessellated field including a plurality of tessellations, each of the plurality of the tessellations representing a part of the spatial coordinate covered by the tessellated field, wherein one or more of the tessellations are associated with a multidimensional geographical map, one or more black box components, or combinations thereof.