PARAMICS is a PARAllel MICroscopic Traffic Simulator which is, to our knowledge, the most powerful of its type in the world. The simulator can model around 200,000 vehicles on around 7,000 roads (taken from real road traffic network data) at faster than `real-time' rates, making use of 16K processor TMC Connection Machine CM-200 for the simulation aspect. The project aims to make available to road network planners a new range of tools, and demonstrates that use of high performance computing in real applications is possible and worthwhile, while yielding important and interesting research results.
Gordon Cameron, Brian J. N. Wylie, David McArthur