Virtual time

Abstract

Virtual time is a new paradigm for organizing and synchronizing distributed systems which can be applied to such problems as distributed discrete event simulation and distributed database concurrency control. Virtual time provides a flexible abstraction of real time in much the same way that virtual memory provides an abstraction of real memory. It is implemented using the Time Warp mechanism, a synchronization protocol distinguished by its reliance on lookahead-rollback, and by its implementation of rollback via antimessages.