What is the difference between simulation and simulator

Analysis adds a value to the business, cuts costs or points out to profits not less than the replaced emulated hardware. Simulator is similar to modelling of something that we can't obtain for some reason cost, technology, physical impossibility. It is usually simulated for something new or intangible or complex or not properly known to us like market, weather, combustion, user. So here comes the flight, black hole, stock exchange, simulations. Emulation is like Abstruction.

It shows what it can do. Example: Car driving emulation. Simulation is like Encaptulation. It shows how it can do Example: Car engine inner activity. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?

Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Simulator or Emulator? What is the difference? Ask Question. Asked 12 years ago. Active 1 month ago. Viewed k times. Could anyone explain the difference in terms of programming? Improve this question. Nishant 18k 14 14 gold badges 60 60 silver badges 84 84 bronze badges. Khaled Alshaya Khaled Alshaya In mobile apps development, iPhone has a simulator while Android has an emulator.

More here - stackoverflow. I found Wikipedia's take on this informative: en. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Buo-ren Lin 7 7 bronze badges. Toybuilder Toybuilder By this definition, is it therefore impossible to simulate the real world in software?

I don't think we can accurately represent the underlying state of the real world - only emulate observable properties I do not agree with this "[Simulations] model as much as possible every detail of the target to represent what the target does in reality.

For instance, Flight Simulator probably does not model fishes in the sea because it is useless for the purpose of the simulation. Exactly the opposite answer here: stackoverflow. It seems that most people use these words the other way, as in: simulation generally happens on a higher level than emulation notwithstanding that both words are rarely used together in a given context.

See for example the Android Emulator versus Apple's Simulator. I propose switching around the words in this answer to stay consistent with the majority of definitions, and to prevent confusion for future visitors. I think this answer switched the 2 terms. Show 5 more comments. An emulator can replace the original for real use. A simulator is a model for study and analysis. Henk Holterman Henk Holterman k 28 28 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Henk Your "cockpit" example is fantastic though I understood it after I read Toybuilder answer.

Thanks : — Khaled Alshaya. Virtual PC does not emulate, it virtualizes. QEmu, on the other hand, does emulate. In both cases, the name should be a hint. HOW it emulates the PC is through virtualisation, but that's more of an implementation detail. You might argue that hardware virtualisation is a superset of emulation, in that can provide accelerated CPU support, exclusive hardware device access, etc. I mean, system virtualization in general should not only simulate external behavior but pretty much every nook and cranny of a system, unlike application virtualization where e.

Where can I find said flight emulator? Show 4 more comments. Dheepak J Dheepak J 1, 1 1 gold badge 11 11 silver badges 2 2 bronze badges. Clearest answer I've seen. For me, could only be improved by omitting the extra sentence or integrating it into your excellent contrasting definitions :-D — doughgle. Fully agreed. It could be more formal by saying that an emulator requires the same interface and behavior of the emulated entity, a simulator doesn't. It's the same as "usage as substitute", but more formally testable.

Your answer is different from others. Is Virtual PC a simulator or an Emulator according to you? It's contrary only to Pontus and Aeolai's. It can do every thing what a real PC can do. Pri See the answer of this thread concerning Virtual PC.

It's both, it depends from the perspective. For example you can still say it's a simulation because it cannot heat as a real computer does. A good range of debate starts. Hope i am right! Few derive the difference based on usage, its english meaning, functionality, affordability. But when i apply all the answers in my case study, its not an easy thing — A user. Show 1 more comment. The phrase "ROM emulator" reminds me of virtual video game consoles.

Don't try this at home kids :D — Gearoid Murphy. I think this is a very precise definition of Emulation. So, for example Wine is a simulator because it doesn't necessarily give the same precise output defined in Windows?

You might call it an adaptor. I suppose simulator isn't a bad way to understand it either, but it's not really much closer than emulator. WINE is emulation, in this spectrum. It has the outside appearance of linking Windows binaries but if you were to look to the internals you wouldn't learn anything about Windows.

Some years ago I came up with a very short adage that, I believe, captures the essence of the difference quite nicely: A simulator is an emulator on a mission. Simple Explanation. If you want to convert your PC running Windows into Mac, you can do either of these: 1 You can simply install a Mac theme on your Windows.

Vishnu Vivek Vishnu Vivek 1, 1 1 gold badge 15 15 silver badges 27 27 bronze badges. This is both simple and completely wrong. Pontus Gagge Pontus Gagge Hamad 4, 13 13 gold badges 33 33 silver badges 65 65 bronze badges. Ramsharan Ramsharan 2, 2 2 gold badges 21 21 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges. The key difference is that: With an emulator , you want the output exactly match what the object you are emulating would produce. With a simulator , you want certain properties of your output to be similar to what the object would produce.

The definitions of the terms: emulation -- surpass or exactly match simulate -- imitate in appearance or character. Jay Elston Jay Elston 1, 1 1 gold badge 18 18 silver badges 37 37 bronze badges. Note -- this is very similar to the answer to a question that has been marked as a dup of this one stackoverflow. I did add a definition of the terms asked for in the question but not yet answered and also added some info about uses for simulation finite element analysis for something more than mimicking a device.

This question is probably best answered by taking a look at historical practice. Zaid Zaid Here are the exact definitions taken from a computer science glossary: A simulation is a model of a system that captures the functional connections between inputs and outputs of the system, but without necessarily being based on processes that are the same as, or similar to, those of the system itself.

Aeolai Aeolai 1 1 silver badge 11 11 bronze badges. A google search gives the following definitions of simulate and emulate: simulate imitate the appearance or character of.

None None 5, 1 1 gold badge 38 38 silver badges 50 50 bronze badges. Abhinav Abhinav 63 7 7 bronze badges. To find the right term is actually very easy, just think about following: A simulation does not do anything for real.

Let's see some examples. Simulated vs. Emulated Rain Take a water hose in the garden and let it rain. Emulated Computer While you might think "a simulated computer can have an outcome" this is practically wrong reasoning. So an emulation can be part of a simulation and vice versa.

Emulated Filesystem If you simulate a filesystem, you probably, for practicability, will choose to save the files onto your real filesystem as-is perhaps with some additional meta-information. Emulated World If our world is simulated, we are simulations, too. I stop here, because hallucinations lead us to something completely different. Sometimes, you have to perform simulation as practice in real life — for instance, flight simulation to train pilots. Figure 2: Simulation of a Car and its motion.

Given below are some examples that will help you to understand the meaning of this word more clearly. The scientists used a clever simulation that was good enough to trick everybody.

Jack and Jill used a model to simulate the effects of an earthquake. Using simulation, medical students can learn and practice surgical procedures. They predicated its performance using information gathered from running the simulation.

Stimulation refers to arousing an organism to act, while a simulation is an imitation of something. A stimulation drives an organism to act, causing either a physical or behavioral change, whereas a simulation is the representation of something.

Your body responding to medicine is an example of a response to an external stimulation whereas flight simulation to train pilots is an example of simulation. The main difference between stimulation and simulation is that stimulation refers to arousing an organism to act while a simulation is an imitation of something. In brief, a stimulation drives an organism to act, whereas a simulation is the representation of something.

Of course, because emulators may not do a perfect job of emulating the hardware and software of a production environment, they are not a substitute for real-device testing. A simulated environment will typically suffice for this, because the underlying hardware configuration is unlikely to have much of an impact on data transactions for your application. On the other hand, emulators are most useful when you need to test how software interacts with underlying hardware, or a combination of hardware and software.

Do you want to know whether a firmware update will cause problems for your application? An emulator can help you find that out. Or perhaps you need to know how your application performs using different types of CPUs or different memory allocations. These are also scenarios where emulators come in handy.

To sum up: A simulator provides a fast and easy way to set up a software environment for application testing purposes without mimicking actual hardware.

An emulator takes things a step further by emulating software as well as hardware configurations. Both types of testing platforms are useful when you need to test code quickly across a large range of variations. But neither is a complete substitute for real-device testing, which you should also perform at critical points, such as just before releasing software into production.

Chris Riley HoardingInfo is a technologist who has spent 15 years helping organizations transition from traditional development practices to a modern set of culture, processes and tooling. In addition to being an industry analyst, he is a regular author, speaker, and evangelist in the areas of DevOps, BigData, and IT.