The FMI 3.0 Standard Interface for Clocked and Scheduled Simulations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is a broad overview of IMF 3.0 mainly exploiting two types of simulations: timed simulation and scheduled execution. The article is well written, just a little verbose and, at the same time, with mathematical notations referring to literature, such as (4-10). This would require non-IMF experts to read further documents beyond these 30 pages. However, as it is a position paper also enphasized in the Conclusion, it can be accepted.

Author Response

Thank you for your review and comments. We will take them into account and improve the paper accordingly. This is indeed a position paper which will be followed by other papers detailing the construction of FMI 3.0 scenarios and co-simulation algorithms.

Reviewer 2 Report

This document provides a summary of the two types of clock-based simulations that FMI 3.0 supports: Synchronous Clocked Simulation and Scheduled Execution. Nevertheless, it could be interesting to have a better recall of how the information is routed between distributed components by the co-simulation in respect to time management. Maybe some very short recall of classical mechanisms execution based on logical processors [1], [2] conservative synchronization algorithm and HLA time event driven mechanism would be interesting.

The discussion about the communication of the cause and the time of occurrence of several simultaneous occurrences, the former is interesting since some causality violation comes from a wrong handling of simultaneous events. DEVS community, e.g., [3] [4], has provided efforts about simultaneous events even in Parallel execution and HLA standard it could be interesting situating DEVS with FMI 3.0 approaches.

The article discusses fine control of sub-model computation time, allowing for real-time simulations consisting of many black-box models to be run. Perhaps the situation with HLA Lookahead, LBTS and the time advance grant would be of interest to people used to working with HLA before looking at FMI.

Finally, the introduction to the conception of clocks in the FMI Standard is quite well presented, the formalization is offered along with sample application cases is nice.

[1] Lamport, L. (1979). How to make a multiprocessor computer that correctly executes multiprocess programs. IEEE Transactions on Computers c-28, 9, 690-691.

[2] Fujimoto, R. M. (2000). Parallel and distributed simulation systems (Vol. 300). New York: Wiley.

[3] Chow, A. C. H., & Zeigler, B. P. (1994, December). Parallel DEVS: A parallel, hierarchical, modular modeling formalism. In Proceedings of Winter Simulation Conference (pp. 716-722). IEEE.

[4] Zacharewicz, G., Frydman, C., & Giambiasi, N. (2008). G-DEVS/HLA environment for distributed simulations of workflows. Simulation, 84(5), 197-213.

Author Response

Thank you for your review, comments and interesting comparisons. We will take them into account and improve the paper accordingly. The paper was written to be a position paper for the community, which was the original reason for the lack of details on similar simulation tools. We will add a few sentences to the introduction to clarify the relation to other approaches.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper idea is valid but it doesn't added knowledge to the literature. The paper is related to the journal scope. Overall, the paper cannot be accepted in current format and has to be improved.  The limitation of the paper lies in paper structures and its presentation as it has to be improved.

 

·       The abstract is poor. You have to rewrite it.

·       The introduction section is very poor and it has to be rewritten. It should include the following paragraphs: general information about the topic, define the research problems, summarizes of related works, the gabs, the proposed methodology, results, and paper structure.  

·       At the end of section 5 (Related Works), you have to add a new table for comparing and summarizing the existing approaches.  

·       The discussion is missing.

·       The conclusion section poor. It exactly has the same sentences as abstract. You have to rewrite it.  

·       The paper limitations and is missing.

·       The paper has to be proofread.

Author Response

  Thank you for your review and comments. We have take them into account and improve the paper accordingly. See answers below.   > The abstract is poor. You have to rewrite it.
The abstract has been rewritten.
> The introduction section is very poor and it has to be rewritten. It should include the following paragraphs: general information about the topic, define the research problems, summarizes of related works, the gabs, the proposed methodology, results, and paper structure.
The introduction has been rewritten.
> At the end of section 5 (Related Works), you have to add a new table for comparing and summarizing the existing approaches.
Thank you for the suggestion. A table has been added.
> The discussion is missing.
We have added information discussing the FMI 3.0 against the other approaches in the related works section and in the introduction.
> The conclusion section poor. It exactly has the same sentences as abstract. You have to rewrite it.
The conclusion has been rewritten to be more informative.
> The paper has to be proofread.
We have proofread the paper and fixed the typos - thanks for pointing it out.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has been improved.

As you are mentioning DEVS and HLA with regard to time management. Can you consider this paper [1].

Then coupling HLA and FMI should be better discussed. You can find several papers from the same group of authors U. Durak et Al. and G. Zacharewicz et Al. teams.

[1] Gregory Zacharewicz, Norbert Giambiasi, Claudia Frydman. GDEVS/HLA Environment: A Time Management Improvement. The 17th IMACS World Congress on Scientific Computation, Applied Mathematics and Simulation, Aug 2005, Paris, France. pp.T4-I-116-0844.

 

Author Response

# Open Review (x) I would not like to sign my review report
( ) I would like to sign my review report
English language and style
( ) Extensive editing of English language and style required
(x) Moderate English changes required
( ) English language and style are fine/minor spell check required
( ) I don't feel qualified to judge about the English language and style
Yes Can be improved Must be improved Not applicable
Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?
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Are all the cited references relevant to the research?
( ) ( ) (x) ( )
Is the research design appropriate?
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Are the methods adequately described?
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Are the results clearly presented?
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Are the conclusions supported by the results?
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Comments and Suggestions for Authors
> Thank you for your review, comments and interesting comparisons.
The paper has been improved.
As you are mentioning DEVS and HLA with regard to time management. Can you consider this paper [1]. Then coupling HLA and FMI should be better discussed. You can find several papers from the same group of authors U. Durak et Al. and G. Zacharewicz et Al. teams.
> Thank you for the reference. We have added it along with some other references about coupling of FMI and HLA in the introduction. We do not want to go to much into details on this topic, as it is not the focus of the paper. However, we have added a few sentences to the introduction to clarify the relation to other approaches. We believe a separate paper on orchestration algorithms for FMI 3.0 would be more appropriate to discuss this topic in more detail.
The following references are added to the introduction:
* Yılmaz, Faruk, Umut Durak, Koray Taylan, and Halit Oğuztüzün. “Adapting Functional Mockup Units for HLA-Compliant Distributed Simulation.” In 10th International Modelica Conference, 2014.
* Awais, Muhammad Usman, Peter Palensky, Atiyah Elsheikh, Edmund Widl, and Stifter Matthias. “The High Level Architecture RTI as a Master to the Functional Mock-up Interface Components.” In International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications, 315–20. San Diego, USA: IEEE, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCNC.2013.6504102.
* Awais, Muhammad Usman, Peter Palensky, Wolfgang Mueller, Edmund Widl, and Atiyah Elsheikh. “Distributed Hybrid Simulation Using the HLA and the Functional Mock-up Interface.” In IECON 2013 - 39th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, 7564–69. Vienna, Austria: IEEE, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1109/IECON.2013.6700393
* Gregory Zacharewicz, Norbert Giambiasi, Claudia Frydman. GDEVS/HLA Environment: A Time Management Improvement. The 17th IMACS World Congress on Scientific Computation, Applied Mathematics and Simulation, Aug 2005, Paris, France. pp.T4-I-116-0844.

[1] Gregory Zacharewicz, Norbert Giambiasi, Claudia Frydman. GDEVS/HLA Environment: A Time Management Improvement. The 17th IMACS World Congress on Scientific Computation, Applied Mathematics and Simulation, Aug 2005, Paris, France. pp.T4-I-116-0844.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have considered all my commands and thus the paper can be accepted in current form.

Author Response

We thank you for your work and help in improving the paper!

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Ok now

Author Response

Thank you for your time and effort in helping us improve the paper.