Abstract
The efficient simulation of multi-agent systems presents particular challenges which are not addressed by current parallel discrete event simulation (PDES) models and techniques. While the modelling and simulation of agents, at least at a coarse grain, is relatively straightforward, it is harder to apply PDES approaches to the simulation of the agents’ environment. In conventional PDES approaches a system is modelled as a set of logical processes (LPs). Each LP maintains its own portion of the state of the simulation and interacts with a small number of other LPs. The interaction between the LPs is assumed to be known in advance and does not change during the simulation. In contrast, the environment of a MAS is read and updated by agent and environment LPs in ways which depend on the evolution of the simulation. As a result, MAS simulations typically have a large shared state which is not associated with any particular agent or environment LP. In [1] we proposed a new approach to the distributed simulation of MAS in which the shared state is maintained by a tree of additional logical processes called Communication Logical Processes (CLP). In this paper we refine this model by giving precise definitions of a set of operations which allow agent and environment LPs to interact with the shared state and briefly outline how these operations could be implemented by a CLP.
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Lees, M., Logan, B., Minson, R., Oguara, T., Theodoropoulos, G. (2005). Distributed Simulation of MAS. In: Davidsson, P., Logan, B., Takadama, K. (eds) Multi-Agent and Multi-Agent-Based Simulation. MABS 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3415. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32243-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32243-6_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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