I frequently see Simulation and Emulation in computer science. These two terms seem synonymous. Is there any difference between Simulation and Emulation?
Simulation vs Emulation – Key Differences Explained
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Related Solutions
From what i gathered and understood about The distinction: Most Simply Put
It can be Differentiated by the Nature of Goals
Development Goal
- : Getting It done under pressure and on time.
Production Goals
Keeping it running ( always under pressure)
Needing development on call ( development and bug fix parallelism)
Tackling issues before code goes live.
An Enlightening Chart
from Kanban Applied to Software Development: from Agile to Lean
shows change of Success repeatability,Problem Approach,Process Control,Process Improvement from development to production
Difference based on the Consequences of mistake,Failure
Production : Real-time Immediate loss of hard cash and Potential future opportunities. ** Development:** These cost the company in the long term.
As Péter Török so aptly about production
The latter is where the real, live company processes are run. So when you deploy stuff there, it is live, and any mistake costs hard cash.
Wikipedia's definition of an Algorithm:
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.
Algorithms can be described in various ways, from pure mathematical formulas to complex graphs, more times than not, without pseudocode.
Pseudocode describes how you would implement an algorithm without getting into syntactical details.
So no, they're not really synonymous.
Best Answer
Yes, the concepts are different.
Simulation
A
simulationis a system that behaves similar to something else, but is implemented in an entirely different way. It provides the basic behaviour of a system, but may not necessarily adhere to all of the rules of the system being simulated. It is there to give you an idea about how something works.Example
Think of a flight simulator as an example. It looks and feels like you are flying an airplane, but you are completely disconnected from the reality of flying the plane, and you can bend or break those rules as you see fit. For example, fly an Airbus A380 upside down between London and Sydney without breaking it.
Emulation
An
emulationis a system that behaves exactly like something else, and adheres to all of the rules of the system being emulated. It is effectively a complete replication of another system, right down to being binary compatible with the emulated system's inputs and outputs, but operating in a different environment to the environment of the original emulated system. The rules are fixed, and cannot be changed, or the system fails.Example
The M.A.M.E. system is built around this very premise. All those old arcade systems that have been long forgotten, that were implemented almost entirely in hardware, or in the firmware of their hardware systems can be emulated right down to the original bugs and crashes that would occur when you reached the highest possible score.