Microscopic Transportation Simulation on a Computer Cluster Based on the IEEE 1394 Interface

Microscopic transportation simulation systems often demand much more computing power than that of macroscopic transportation simulation systems. But microscopic transportation simulation systems are getting more popular because the microscopic simulation method can produce more accurate results than macroscopic simulation method in which, individual traveller is abstracted into ‘flows’. A typical microscopic transportation simulation system for a metropolitan areas often need to carry-out computation on millions of individual travellers, super computers or highend computer clusters are often utilised to achieve this goal. Although costs of super computers or computer clusters are reducing, they are still the major obstacle for deploying microscopic transportation simulation systems widely. In this paper we discuss a cost-effective computer cluster that is based on the IEEE 1394 bus as the interconnection and how the cluster can be used in two typical microscopic transportation simulation systems with their performances improved.