Re: [Swarm-Modelling] Something Glen said

[Maarten Sierhuis]

Not to push Brahms too much (tongue severely in cheek ;-) ), but Brahms is a high-powered multi-agent language, with its own compiler (generates XML as byte code) and distributed virtual machine, and is multi-threaded. Each agent is its own Java-thread. The next version will have the capability of each workframe (situation-action rule) be its own thread, so you can have an individual agent running multiple threaded rules with actions at the same time. The modeler has no need to know about threads, agent distribution or the like. This is handled by the underlying virtual machine. Brahms can be run in simulation mode (for multi-agent simulations) or real-time mode (for implementing agent systems). The next version will include a distributed directory service so there is no single point of failure with regard of finding agents on the network (e.g. Corba does not handle distributed directory services ... which is especially useful when the network is not stable ... like from Earth to the Space Station or the Moon, or a cell network connection for that matter). Also, the next version will support multiple communication layers (TCP/IP, UDP, JMS, SSL, HTTP, CORBA), whatever one likes, if and when one wants to run in a distributed environment.

Self-evaluating ... well working on that with some model checking experts here at NASA :-)

On Nov 22, 2006, at 7:36 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

I think if there was a self-evaluating, distributed, high performance programming language and runtime platform that would be 90% of the battle.  Like OpenMP with distributed objects, minimally, or perhaps a multithreaded R with native code on-the-fly native code generation.   If something like that existed and really worked (and scaled) then it might be interesting to think about some domain-specific abstractions.   That's where the mechanical complexity is.

Doei ... MXS

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 Dr. ing. Maarten Sierhuis                 USRA/RIACS

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