-like the communications are intercepted to be simulated according to the
-characteristics of the simulated execution platform. The description of this
-target platform is given as an input for the execution, by the mean of an XML
-file. It describes the properties of the platform, such as the computing node
-with their computing power, the interconnection links with their bandwidth and
-latency, and the routing strategy. The simulated running time of the
-application is computed according to these properties.
-
-\AG{Faut-il ajouter quelque-chose ?}
+like the communications are intercepted, and their running time is computed
+according to the characteristics of the simulated execution platform. The
+description of this target platform is given as an input for the execution, by
+the mean of an XML file. It describes the properties of the platform, such as
+the computing node with their computing power, the interconnection links with
+their bandwidth and latency, and the routing strategy. The simulated running
+time of the application is computed according to these properties.
+
+To compute the durations of the operations in the simulated world, and to take
+into account resource sharing (e.g. bandwith sharing between competiting
+communications), SimGrid uses a fluid model. This allows to run relatively fast
+simulations, while still keeping accurate
+results~\cite{bedaride:hal-00919507,tomacs13}. Moreover, depending on the
+simulated application, SimGrid/SMPI allows to skip long lasting computations and
+to only take their duration into account. When the real computations cannot be
+skipped, but the results have no importance for the simulation results, there is
+also the possibility to share dynamically allocated data structures between
+several simulated processes, and thus to reduce the whole memory consumption.
+These two techniques can help to run simulations at a very large scale.