ISI's SDI Architecture Simulator: The 'KMAC' Battle Manager Specification Language
Abstract
In 1987, ISI's parallel distributed computing research group implemented a prototype sequential simulation system, designed for high-level simulation of candidate (Strategic Defense Initiative) architectures. A main design goal was to produce a simulation system that could incorporate non-trivial, executable representations of battle management computations on each platform that were capable of controlling the actions of that platform throughout the simulation. The term BMA (battle manager abstraction was used to refer to these simulated battle management computations. In our first version of the simulator, the BMAs were C++ programs that we wrote and manually inserted into the system. Since then, we have designed and implemented kmac, a high-level language for writing BMA's. The KMAC preprocessor, built using the Unix tools lex 2 and YACC 3, translates KMAC source programs into C++ programs and passes them on to the C++ compiler. The KMAC preprocessor has been incorporated into and operates under the control of the simulator's interactive user interface. After the KMAC preprocessor has translated a program into C++, the user interface system invokes the C++ compiler, and incorporates the resulting object code into the simulator load module for execution as part of a simulation run. This report describes the KMAC language and its preprocessor. Section 2 provides background material on the design of the simulation system that is necessary for understanding some of the parts of KMAC and some of the reasons it is structured the way it is. Section 3 describes the syntax and semantics of the language, and Section 4 discusses design of the preprocessor. Keywords: Laser based defence.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 1989
- Accession Number
- ADA211572
Entities
People
- David Mizell
- Scott Carter
Organizations
- University of Southern California