As always, we need to uses approximations and mix physical processes with the terms of simulation
The notion of time is vital for biological and electronic computing [26, 93]. However, when simulating biological objects by electronic computers, the they are not identical, and, what is worse, they are even not proportional. The way as computers work [177], destroys even their sequence. For this reason, a pseudo-time is used, which we call ’simulated time’. The biological processes are cut into segments of variable size. At the beginning the period for the biological process is set and its length is transferred to the scheduler of the engine (important: this scheduler sits on top of the scheduler of the operating system and works independently from it). The information comprises a callback function, at what simulated time what activity is to be executed. Many biological processes run simultanously and they individually communicate with the scheduler. This way, the scheduler has the information which biological process wants to use the processor, in a chronological order. The scheduler maintains the simulated time as multiples of a ’time resolution’. In this way the continuous simulated time is mapped to discrete time steps. The time between those discrete steps is considered they are the same.
When the next element of the queue follows, the scheduler increases the simulated time to the value of the requested time of action of the actual item. If more than one action is scheduled to the same time, all those actions are performed, in an arbitrary order. At the end of the period, the callback function notifies the biological process that the requested timing period is over (meaning that the requested computing activity was performed) and the scheduler takes the next item in the queue. If the time of that item is different, the system advances to that time value.
This way the biological objects work on the same time scale. Through the elapsed time and/or notifying each other, they can cooperate. Although the periods of the simulated time and the period while the computer works out the simulated task are greatly disproportional, the simulation is perfectly timed. The simulated process asks to schedule its phases to the biologically correct time, and they are executed at a processor time when the processor has free activity time.