Re: [Swarm-Modelling] Floating point arithmetic

[Russell Standish]

I guess my main disappointment with Swarm was the lack of adequate C++
integration. I did do some work on this area (see eg the paper Richard
Leow and I did a coupleof years ago in SwarmFest), but in the end
found it far more productive just to reimplement Swarm's best ideas in
a C++ system.

The same would probably apply for RePast, although I haven't looked at
the software in detail (numerous bad experiences with Java have tended
to put me off it).

The main disadvantage of a C++ system like EcoLab is that it is not a
useful for system for generating the "pedagogical example". It would
nice if once it came to publication stage, one could automatically
turn your research model into a Java applet (or whatever) that could
run in a browser. But I'm really not sure how this can be done with
present technologies. Maybe when (or if) Java gets templates, and
decent optimising compilers, and decent linkages to C/Fortran
libraries, it might fit this role. Alternative,something like a C++ ->
JVM compiler might fit the bill. Dunno - its an open problem.

Cheers

On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 07:51:23AM -0600, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> Russell Standish wrote:
> 
> >You said that Java has an MPI interface too - perhaps that doesn't
> >work too well?
> 
> 
> James Marshall wrote:
> 
> >http://aspen.ucs.indiana.edu/pss/HPJava/mpiJava.html
> >
> >As I say, I haven't used it. It's a JNI interface to the MPI libs though.
> 
> My point is that high level interfaces like RMI often don't come for 
> free.  Obviously (laugh), I'm a big believer in JNI and similar foreign 
> function interfaces.   I don't see a reason why MPI for Java (like 
> Swarm) couldn't, in principle, work well (especially in a GCJ-like 
> framework), but that's changing the argument.
> 
> Homogeneity is nice, but there will always be some new technology that 
> comes along that aims to subsume everything else.  Sometimes it is good 
> to jump, othertimes it is not.   [And no, in retrospect, I don't think 
> rewriting Swarm in Java would have been a good jump.  In fact, had I 
> known it was going to be redundant, I would have spent the time 
> developing something more radical.  Currently, the HPCS languages Chapel 
> and Fortress look interesting but I don't work on agent-based modeling 
> infrastructure anymore so it is of course just talk.  Repast's work with 
> .NET is also interesting to me.]
> 
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A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone 8308 3119 (mobile)
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