Concurrent Programming for DAI

Concurrent Programming for DAI

Gul A. Agha & Needem Jamali

Concurrent Programming 2

Concurrent Programming

Concurrent programming introduces many challenges:

A key challenge is the difficulty of programming parallel and distributed architectures: Some models are very low-level (shared variables

model).

One approach would be to use concurrent objects in a reflective architecture. Using agent programming is such an architecture.


Patterns of Concurrent Problem Solving.

Three common Patterns: Pipelined Concurrency

Enumeration of potential solutions and the concurrent testing of these solutions.

Divide and Conquer Concurrent elaboration of different sub problems and joining

the solutions. No interaction between the procedures.

Cooperative problem solving. Processes dynamically interact in order to solve the problem.


Agent Programming Paradigms

A few agent programming languages: Agent Oriented Programming (AOP). Concurrent MetateM. Telescript. Actors.

I will present all four, with a focus on Actors.

AOP 5


A few agent programming languages: Agent Oriented Programming (AOP).

Introduction to Multiagent Systems (Wooldridge). An Overview of Agent Oriented Programming (Shoham).

Concurrent MetateM. Telescript. Actors.

AOP 6

Agent Oriented Programming (AOP)

Due to Yoav Shoham (Stanford).Based on cognitive and societal view of computation. An agent is an entity that functions continuously and

autonomously in an environment in which other agents exist.

An agent’s state is viewed as consisting of mental components such as: beliefs, capabilities, choices, commitments and desires.

“Agenthood is in the mind of the programmer.” What makes a system - an agent, is the fact that one has chosen

to analyze and control it in these mental terms.

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Agent Oriented Programming – AGENT0

Shoham has developed a basic programming language to support AOP: AGENT0. An agent is specified in terms of four sets:

Capabilities (Things the agent can do). [Initial] beliefs (Things the agent knows/believes). [Initial] Commitments. Commitment rules.

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Agent Oriented Programming – AGENT0 - 2

The component which determines how the agent acts is the commitment-rules set.A commitment rule consists of three components: A message condition. A mental condition. An action.

The rule fires if the agent received a message that matches the message condition, and the agent’s beliefs match the mental condition.The agent than becomes committed to the action.

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Agent Oriented Programming – AGENT0 - 3

An action may be private (sends no message), or communicative(sends messages).

Messages are constrained to three type: Request. Unrequest. Inform.

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Agent Oriented Programming – AGENT0 – Example

A commitment rule example: COMMIT(

( agent, REQUEST, DO(time, action)), ;;; msg condition( B, [now, Friend agent] ANDCAN(self, action) ANDNOT [time, CMT(self, anyaction)]), ;;; mental condition

self, DO(time, action) )

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Agent Oriented Programming – AGENT0 – Main Loop

1. Read all current messages, update beliefs, and hence commitments – when necessary.

2. Execute all commitments for the current cycle where the capability condition of the associated action is satisfied.

3. Goto (1).

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AOP - Properties of the Agent’s Components

The programmer may assume several properties of the agent’s components: Internal consistency. Good faith. Introspection. Persistence of mental state.

AOP 13


A few agent programming languages: Agent Oriented Programming (AOP). Concurrent MetateM.

Introduction to Multiagent Systems (Wooldridge).

Telescript. Actors.

Concurrent MetateM 14

Concurrent MetateM

Due to Michael Fisher.

Based on the direct execution of logical formulae.

An agent is programmed by giving it a temporal logic specification of the behavior it should exhibit.


Concurrent MetateM - Execution

Agent’s execution: Iteratively build a logical model for the

temporal agent’s specification. It is possible to prove that the procedure used to

execute an agent specification is correct. If it is possible to satisfy the specification, then the

agent will do so.


Concurrent MetateM – Agent Structure

Communication through broadcast message passing.

An agent has two main components: An interface Computational engine


Concurrent MetateM – Agent Structure - Interface

The interface consists of three components: Unique Agent ID. Environment propositions. Component propositions.

Example: Stack(pop, push)[popped, full].

Agent ID Component

propositionsEnvironment propositions


Concurrent MetateM – Agent Structure - Engine

An agent specification is given as a set of program rules, which are temporal logic of the formulae of the form:

antecedent about the past

consequent about present and future.

The name of the paradigm: ‘Declarative past and imperative future’.


Concurrent MetateM – Syntax

PML – Propositional MetateM Logic.


Concurrent MetateM – Syntax Example

�important(agents) It is now and will always be true the agents are

important.

important(Janine) Sometime in the future, Janine will be important.

(¬friends(us)) U apologize(you) We are not friends until you apologize.

Oapologize(you) Tomorrow(in the next state), you apologize.


Concurrent MetateM – Execution

1. Update the history of the agent by receiving messages (environment propositions) from other agents an adding them to its history.

2. Check which rules fire, by comparing past time antecedents of each rule against the current history to see which is satisfied.

3. Jointly execute the fired rules together with any commitments carried over from previous cycles.

4. Goto 1.


Concurrent MetateM – Execution Example

Telescript 23


A few agent programming languages: Agent Oriented Programming (AOP). Concurrent MetateM. Telescript.

Mobile Agents (James E. White).

Actors.

Telescript 24

Telescript

Telescript implements the concept of mobile agents in a commercial setting.One approach for sending tasks over a network is by using RPC (Remote Procedure calling). One computer is able to call procedures on

another computer. Ongoing interaction requires ongoing

communication.

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Telescript

A better approach would be to use RP (Remote Programming). One computer is able to supply procedures to

be executed on another computer. Better performance (no ongoing

communication).

Telescript follows the RP approach, and extends it to the mobile agents concept.

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Telescript

Main concepts implemented by Telescript Places:

A network of computer is a collection of places. A place offers a service to the mobile agents that enter it. Example: A mainframe computer may function as a shopping

center which houses several stores. Each store is a place. Agents:

A communication application is an agent. Each agent occupies a particular place. An agent may move from one place to another. A place is permanently occupied by one distinguished agent

which represents the place, and provides its services.

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Telescript

Main Telescript concepts (Contd.) Travel:

Travel lets an agent obtain a service offered remotely, and then return to its starting place.

Example: A user’s agent might travel from home to a ticketing place to obtain tickets for a show, and then return home to report the user about the tickets it obtained.

Implemented in Telescript by the go instruction. Meetings:

Two agents in the same place may meet. Example: The agent in pursuit for tickets, may meet the ticket

agent, and purchases the tickets Implemented in Telescript by the meet instruction.

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Telescript

Main Telescript concepts (Contd.) Connections:

Two agents in different places may make a connection between them.

Example: The agent that travels in search of tickets, might send a diagram to the home agent, representing the seats available.

Implemented in Telescript by the connect instruction.

Telescript 29

TelescriptMain Telescript concepts (Contd.) Authorities:

The authority of an agent is the individual or organization in the physical world that it represents.

One agent may discern the authority of another. Telescript technology verifies the authority of an agent

whenever it travels from one place to another. A region is a collection of places provided by computers that

are all operated by the same authority. Unless a source region can prove the authority of the agent to

the destination region, the agent is denied entry. To determine an agent’s authority, the name instruction used. The result of the instruction is a telename.. Identities distinguish agents of the same authority.

Telescript 30

Telescript

Main Telescript concepts (Contd.) Permits:

A permit is data that grants capabilities. An agent can discern its capabilities, but cannot increase them. Example: An agent’s permit may give it the right to create

other agents. To determine an agent’s permit, the permit instruction is used. Permits help guard against malicious agents, and against

unbridled consumption of resources by ill programmed or ill intentioned agents.

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A few agent programming languages: Agent Oriented Programming (AOP). Concurrent MetateM. Telescript. Actors.

Actors 32

Actors - References

Concurrent Programming for DAI (Gul A. Agha and Neede, Jamali)

Concurrent Object Oriented programming (Gul Agha)

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Why Actors?

Object Oriented Programming seems suitable for agent programming.

Concurrent Objects must also specify ways of interactions and other concepts relevant for concurrent programming.

The Actor paradigm provides this abstraction.

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What Are Actors?

An actor is basically a reasoning agent (introduced by Carl Hewit in the early `70s)

This term was refine over the years into a model of concurrency.

An actor encapsulates behavior (data and procedure) as well as a process.

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Actors - Overview

Actors carry out their action asynchronously and communicate by sending messages. The basic mechanism is asynchronous and buffered.

However, other forms may be defined in the context of the model.

Actors may be dynamically created and reconfigured. Provides flexibility in organizing concurrent activity.

The internal behavior is encapsulated. Thus any agent may be defined using any programming language.

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Actors – Basic Primitives

Three basic primitives: newactor/create(e)

Creates a new actor which is evaluating expression e returns its address

Send (a, v) Sends receiver a, the message v.

Ready/become(b) Alters the behavior of the executing actor to b. Frees the actor to accept another message.

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Actors – More About Basic Primitives

The newactor primitive extends the dynamic creation capability in sequential programming languages by allowing creation of processes.The send primitive is the asynchronous analog of function application. It causes a message to be put in an actor’s mailbox (queue)The become primitive give actors a history-sensitive behavior necessary for shared mutable data objects by delineating a group of actions as atomic. This is in contrast to pure functional programming.

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Actors –About State Changes

A state change is specified using replacement behaviors. When an actor processes a communication, it also

computes its behavior in response to the next communications.

For a fully functional actor, the replacement behavior is identical to the original behavior.

A behavior change may represent A change of state variables (balance of bank account) A change of in the operations performed in response to a

message.

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Actors – More About State Changes

One of the advantages of replacement behavior is this: The analysis of the system is easier. The granularity of the system is more flexible. The programmer may aggregate changes

avoiding control flow dependencies. Allows an easy determination of when a

process execution is finished.

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Actors – Event Diagrams

Concurrent computations can be visualized by event diagrams.

Lifeline

Events

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Actors – Event Diagram For Factorial Computation

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History sensitive behavior

Bank account example

Given the above definition, one can create a new back-account actor with an initial balance of 1000:(define my-account (create BankAccount 1000))

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Join Continuations

One of the three main concurrent programming paradigms is: Divide and conquer.

The way to implement this paradigm using actors is by creating Join –Continuation (jc) actors. A jc actor, collect (and/or merges) the results

other actors have produced

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Join Continuations - Example

A filtered search: Given a multi-ary tree, we would like to search

it for values by filtering them. The algorithm:

After checking for the base case, the behavior FILTEREDSEARCH, creates a jc actor with behavior COLLECT. Then it creates a FILTEREDSEARCH agent for each of the sub-trees.

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Join Continuations – Example contd.

A filtered search(defActor FILTERSEARCH()

(let ((filter (lambda (list)…)))

(method (cust tree)(if (= (num-children tree) 0)

(send cust (content tree))(let ((jc (newActor COLLECT(cust (num-children tree)(list (content tree) filter))))(map (lambda (x)(let ((f (newActor FILTERSEARCH())))(send f jc x)))(children tree))

(ready FILTERSEARCH()))))))

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Join Continuations – Example – The JC Actor.

(defActor COLLECT (cust n results filter)(method (res)

(cond ((> n 1)

(ready COLLECT (cust (- n 1) (append res results))))

((= n 1)

(send cust (filter (append res results)))

(ready SINK())))))

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Semantics of Actors

The λ calculus will be extended for the actor semantics.An instantaneous snapshot of the actor system is called a configuration.The notion of open systems is captured by explicitly representing a set of receptionists which may receive messages from actors outside a configuration, and a set of actors external to the configuration which may receive messages from the actors within.

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Semantics of Actors – Configuration

Maps a finite set of addresses to their behaviors

Finite sets of actor addresses

Finite multiset of (pending) messages

Receptionists (actors that may receive messages from external actors)

External actors

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Semantics of Actors – Basic Actor

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Fairness of Actor Systems

The define actor semantics is fair. Which means every enabled transition eventually fires. Every busy actor eventually makes progress. Every actor that is ready to receive a message

will eventually receive a message, provided there is a message pending for it.

If an actor does not become “stuck” it will eventually process every message sent to it.

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Equivalence of Actor Systems

When reasoning as to a concurrent system, one may wish to define an equivalence of two systems.

Since the actor system is fair, one may reason about eventuality properties. Thus, equivalence may be defined.

The notion of equivalence is defined by adding an observable distinguished event to the set of transitions.

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Equivalence of Actor Systems - 2

Two actor expressions may be plugged into the same context to see if the event occurs in one or the other case.

Two expressions are considered equivalent if they have the same observations over all possible contexts.

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Equivalence of Actor Systems - 3

Since actor computation is nondeterministic, three notions of observation over a computation tree are raised: There are many computational paths in the tree The event may occur on some, but not all paths.

May equivalence - “always occurs” is as good as “sometimes occurs”

Must equivalence - “never occurs” is as good as “only sometimes occurs”

Convex equivalence – the intersection of the two equivalences.

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Extension To The Basic Actors Model

Mobility of actors

Resource bounded agents.

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Mobility of Actors

To take advantage of the agents’ ability to autonomously decide whether, when and where they want to migrate, the Actor model must be extended.True migration must allow an actor to migrate to a different node while it is in the middle of its execution.In order for an agent to migrate, we first need a suitable syntax:

…(let (( f (newActor FILTERSEARCH()) @ (host-of x)

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Mobility of Actors - Implementation

We need to identify an actor’s current location. Instead of a, we now have h.a The name a at any node corresponds to the same actor.

Migration may be represented in two ways: Provide a migration primitive, or Provide an agent with a way to grab its own state and

send it over (inside a message) to a remote host. The original agent can then become a forwarder (of messages).

We will use the latter.

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Mobility of Actors – Migration Syntax

A new primitive is added: ccf which grabs the agent’s current state.

Using this new primitive, higher level operations may be represented as macros.

We will assume that each host also has a manager actor: h.m that acts on behalf of the host and manages its resources.

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Mobility of Actors – Migration Syntax

Example for a macro used for migration: migrate@h.

This macro is used for migration of an actor to a remote host h.

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Mobility of Actors – Migration Macro

The function given to ccf first sends a move request to the remote host’s manager – h.m using the reduction context enclosed in y as its behavior. (The host than creates an actor with the same name as the requesting actor). The actor then changes its behavior to WAIT-ACK. (let ((k (getkey)))

(ccf (lambda (y)

(seq (send h.m move self y k (personal-name self))

(ready WAIT-ACK (h m k ((personal-name self))))))

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Mobility of Actors – Migration Macro

(defActor WAIT-ACK

(lambda (ret-h ret-m ret-k)

(if (and (= h ret-h) (= m ret-m) (=k ret-k))

(ready FORWARDER (h.a))

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Mobility of Actors – Semantics

The transition semantics should be modified to address support for migration. A superscript is now added to the actor state to represent

the host.

We assume that all creation is local and that only message co-located on the same host as an actor are consumed. Other messages are forwarded. A superscript is added to each message to identify the host

of the intended recipient. A new transition is added to represent message forwarding.

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Mobility of Actors – Semantics

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Resource Bounded Agents

An economic model may be used to protect against resource consumptive behavior of agents in a multiagent system.I will use the problem of Filtered search to demonstrate the resource bound model. The Actor with the behavior FILTERSEARCH

will now receive a new parameter - res – to represent the resources that it can consume in the search.

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Resource Bounded Agents(defActor FILTERSEARCH()

(let ((filter (lambda (list)…)))

(method (cust tree)(if (= (num-children tree) 0)

(send cust (content tree))(let ((jc (newActor TELLCOLLECT

(count 0))(map (lambda (x)

(if (> (my-resources) delta) (let ((f (newActor FILTERSEARCH()) @(host-of x))) (send f jc x (part (my-resources))) (setf count (+ count 1)))))

(children tree)((send jc cust count (content tree)

(part (my-resources)) filter)(ready FILTERSEARCH()))))))))

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Resource Bounded Agents

The application will stop when only delta resources remains. We need delta in order to send the results to the client.

The jc does not know in advance, how many messages it should expect. Thus we now have the TELLCOLLECT behavior which waits for this number, then becomes COLLECT.

Note that this example does not account for the resources actors consume while they are inactive.

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Resource Bounded Agents – Economic Model

We need a notion of a universal currency, in order to implement an economic model. Resource allocation will be measure in GCUs

(Global Currency Units) The analog of renting resource should be in

mind (rather than purchasing them).

Waiting actors should also pay for their hosts.

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Resource Bounded Agents – Semantics

A value r is added to the agent’s state, to represent the GCUs available to the agent.Β is now added to represent the system map: Host agents and their connecting network. [s]h Means host agent h has state s.

Tst is a function that takes the current state of a host and the transition being applied, to give the next state.

Tres(a, h) is a function representing a contract between an agent a and host h hosting it, and determines the cost of transition t when the host is in state s.

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Reasoning About Agent Systems

When building a multiagent/actor system, one would like to reason about its behavior and eventuality properties. Correctness (out of the scope of this presentation). Fairness – We saw the Actor model is fair. Actor systems equivalence. Concurrency index. Debugging (out of the scope of this presentation).

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Concurrency Index

The concurrency index of a system, is the number of processors currently active in the system. A concurrency index of 1 means sequential

execution. A high concurrency index may indicate bad

programming.

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Concurrency Index - Mergesort

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Concurrency Index – Mergesort With Fewer Dependencies

Documents

Concurrent Programming for DAI