An Approach to the Parallelisation of Agent-Based Applications

This report describes an approach to the parallelisation of agent-based applications. The software framework which forms the foundation of this work is the Flexible Large-scale Agent Modelling Environment FLAME which is being developed in a collaboration between the Computer Science Department of the University of Sheffield and the Software Engineering Group at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. FLAME is a generic program generator for agent-based simulations. Using a definition of the agent-based model and an C implementation of the agents state change functions, FLAME generates a complete ABM application. FLAME can generate versions of the application which can execute on both serial and parallel systems. This report describes this process in detail and focuses on the techniques used within FLAME to parallelise the agent-based application. Some test results are presented which show some promising speed-ups of these applications. The report concludes with some future developments of the FLAME functionality and architecture which should improve the parallel efficiency of FLAME generated applications. † Software Engineering Group, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory ‡ Computer Science Department, University of Sheffield