Re: more help please

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "L" == Laurence  <address@hidden> writes:

L> Hi all, First of all, many thanks to everyone who responded to my
L> last questions.  Since then I have been able to extend my SWARM
L> chemotaxis model so that the objects representing the enzymes are
L> represented in their correct concentrations.  I have further
L> queries however about SWARM's parallel execution.

L> Basically, the input into the system takes the form of a message to
L> each of the 500 receptor objects.  The signals then pass through a
L> network of interconnected enzyme objects, some of which work
L> antagonistically, to the single motor object, whereupon the signal
L> will affect the motor's state.

L> Q1: The enzymes that work antagonistically seem to be waiting for a
L> method to finish instead of interrupting that method by calling it
L> again with a different value as a parameter (so as to change a
L> flag).  Can an object execute the same method more than once at a
L> time?  If not, how can the execution of methods be interrupted?

L> Q2: I have a BLT graph monitoring the state of the motor
L> (represented as an int, range 0-4).  However, the messages sent to
L> the receptors trigger 1000s of other messages, some of which affect
L> the motor state.  Instead of showing this, the graph waits until
L> every message has been sent before continuing, displaying only the
L> motor's final state after many fluctuations.  How can I get to
L> graph to keep going whilst other messages are being sent?

L> Both these problems involve parallel execution, which I thought
L> SWARM was capable of.  Why should this happen?

Well in truth, Swarms don't really run in parallel at all (yet).  The
activity data structures that you create handle the `conceptual'
aspects of concurrency (i.e hierarchical Swarms with different
Schedules etc.), but *ultimately* this hierachical activity structure
is actually completely `flattened out' and executed serially at
run-time.

However don't despair, true parallelism is on the agenda for the
future of Swarm.  The current goal, however is to finish off what
Roger calls the `serial reference implementation' of Swarm which any
(true) parallel implementation should be able to duplicate.

Regards,
 
 --- Alex

-- 
  Alex Lancaster         |   e-mail: address@hidden
  Swarm Developer        |      web: http://www.santafe.edu/~alex
  Santa Fe Institute     |      tel: +1-(505) 984-8800 (ext 242)
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