Cosenza, B., Popov, N., Juurlink, B. et al. (5 more authors) (2021) Easy and efficient agent-based simulations with the OpenABL language and compiler. Future Generation Computer Systems, 116. pp. 61-75. ISSN 0167-739X
Abstract
Agent-based simulations represent an effective scientific tool, with numerous applications from social sciences to biology, which aims to emulate or predict complex phenomena through a set of simple rules performed by multiple agents. To simulate a large number of agents with complex models, practitioners have developed high-performance parallel implementations, often specialized for particular scenarios and target hardware. It is, however, difficult to obtain portable simulations, which achieve high performance and at the same time are easy to write and to reproduce on different hardware. This article gives a complete presentation of OpenABL, a domain-specific language and a compiler for agent-based simulations that enable users to achieve high-performance parallel and distributed agent simulations with a simple and portable programming environment. OpenABL is comprised of (1) an easy-to-program language, which relies on domain abstractions and explicitly exposes agent parallelism, synchronization and locality, (2) a source-to-source compiler, and (3) a set of pluggable compiler backends, which generate target code for multi-core CPUs, GPUs, and cloud-based systems. We evaluate OpenABL on simulations from different fields. In particular, our analysis includes predator–prey and keratinocyte, two complex simulations with multiple step functions, heterogeneous agent types, and dynamic creation and removal of agents. The results show that OpenABL-generated codes are portable to different platforms, perform similarly to manual target-specific implementations, and require significantly fewer lines of codes.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 Elsevier B.V. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Future Generation Computer Systems. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Agent-based simulation; Domain specific language; GPU; Parallel and distributed computing; Compilers |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/N018869/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 14 May 2021 13:14 |
Last Modified: | 27 Oct 2021 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier BV |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.future.2020.10.014 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:167728 |
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