[FRIAM] FW: Distribution / Parallelization of ABM's

[Stephen Guerin]

Laszlo sent the same request out to the NAACSOS list, too. Here's a response
that may be interesting to FRIAM-folk.

-Steve 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Les Gasser [mailto:gasser at uiuc.edu] 
> Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 1:14 PM
> To: Laszlo Gulyas
> Cc: naacsos-list at lists.andrew.cmu.edu; SIMSOC at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: Distribution / Parallelization of ABM's
> 
> NAACSOS - http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/naacsos/
> Laszlo, below are links to five papers that address various 
> aspects of these issues, part of a stream of work over about 
> a 20 year period.
> These cover conceptualizations, requirements, approaches, 
> scaling issues, etc. (Also available through 
> http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~gasser/papers/).
> 
> Others have also worked in these areas, going back to Lesser 
> et al.'s work distributing HEARSAY (papers of Lesser & 
> Fennel; Lesser & Erman); Ed Durfee's MS thesis at UMASS in 
> the early 1980s on distributing a distributed problem solving 
> simulator, Dan Corkill's work on parallelizing blackboard 
> systems at UMASS, early 1990s (others worked on this too).  
> References to all this are availble via 
> http://mas.cs.umass.edu/pub/ and it has been quite inspiring 
> to me personally.  More recently there is also Brian Logan 
> and Georgios Theorodopoulos' work on distributing MAS, 
> concerning especially dealing with environment models as 
> points of serialization.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> -- Les
> 
> Les Gasser, Kelvin Kakugawa, Brant Chee and Marc Esteva 
> "Smooth Scaling Ahead: Progressive MAS Simulation from Single 
> PCs to Grids"
> in Paul Davidsson, Brian Logan, and Keiki Takadama (Eds.) 
> Multi-Agent and Multi-Agent-Based Simulation.
> Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3415, Springer, 2005 
> http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~gasser/papers/gasser-etal-mamabs04-final.pdf
> 
> Les Gasser and Kelvin Kakugawa.
> "MACE3J: Fast Flexible Distributed Simulation of Large, 
> Large-Grain Multi-Agent Systems."
> In Proceedings of AAMAS-2002.
> [Finalist for Best Paper Award at this conference.] 
> http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~gasser/papers/mace3j-aamas02-pap.pdf
> 
> Les Gasser.
> "MAS Infrastructure Definitions, Needs, Prospects,"
> in Thomas Wagner and Omer Rana, editors, Infrastructure for 
> Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Scalable Multi-Agent 
> Systems, Springer-Verlag, 2001 Also appears in ICFAI Journal 
> of Managerial Economics, 11:2, May, 2004, pp 35-45.
> http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~gasser/papers/masidnp-08-with-table.pdf
> 
> Les Gasser.
> "Agents and Concurrent Objects."
> IEEE Concurrency, 6(4) pp. 74-77&81, October-December, 1998.
> http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~gasser/papers/AgentsAndObjects-07.html
> 
> Les Gasser, Carl Braganza, and Nava Herman.
> "MACE: A Flexible Testbed for Distributed AI Research"
> in Michael N. Huhns, ed.
> Distributed Artificial Intelligence
> Pitman Publishers, 1987, 119-152.
> http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~gasser/papers/gasser-braganza-herman
> -mace-a-flexible-testbed-for-dai-research-1987.ps
> http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~gasser/papers/gasser-braganza-herman
> -mace-a-flexible-testbed-for-dai-research-1987.pdf
> 
> 
> Laszlo Gulyas wrote:
> > NAACSOS - http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/naacsos/
> > [**** Apologies for cross-postings. ****]
> > 
> > Dear Colleagues,
> > 
> > We are compiling a survey on techniques to parallelize agent-based 
> > simulations. We are interested in both in-run and inter-run 
> > parallelizations (i.e., when one distributes the agents and 
> when one 
> > distributes individual runs in a parameter sweep), albeit I 
> think, the 
> > more challenging part is the former.
> > 
> > We are aware that in-run parallelization is a non-trivial task and, 
> > what's more, it is likely that it cannot be done in general. Our 
> > approach is trying to collect 'communication templates' 
> that may make 
> > distribution  / parallelization feasible. E.g., when the model is 
> > spatial and comminication is (mostly) local, there are 
> already works to do the job.
> > However, we foresee other cases when the problem can be solved.
> > 
> > As I said, we are now compiling a survey. We are aware of a few 
> > publications and threads at various lists, but I'd like to 
> ask you all 
> > to send me references to such works if you know about them. 
> (If you do 
> > not have references, but have ideas that you are ready to share, 
> > please, do not hesitate either.) Thank you all in advance!
> > 
> > For your information, our ultimate goal is to be able to 
> run ABM's on 
> > the grid -- which adds another layer of complication, namely the 
> > uncertainity of resources and slower communication. But we 
> will deal with that later!
> > ;-)
> > 
> > Best regards,
> > 
> > Laszlo Gulyas (aka Gulya)
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> 
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