Parallel Execution Of Social Simulation Models InA Grid Environment

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes

GUESS / LabMAg / University of Lisbon, Portugal{davide.nunes, xarax}@di.fc.ul.pt

June 5, 2012

Outline

1 IntroductionObjectivesGrid ComputingSimulation Platforms

2 MASON + JPPF - An ImplementationMASONJPPFCombining MASON with JPPFExperiment Distribution OverviewGrid Performance Tests

3 A Model of Multiple Social ContextsMultiple Social ContextsContext Permeability, Switching and Segregation

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Objectives

Introduction

The Problem

Even for simple simulation models, exploring a big parameterspace is computationally expensive.

Configuring a High-performance cluster is time consuming andrequires technical expertise.

Objective

To provide an implementation where one can easily deploysimple social simulation models in a distributed environmentwith minimum effort.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 3 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Objectives

Introduction

The Problem

Even for simple simulation models, exploring a big parameterspace is computationally expensive.

Configuring a High-performance cluster is time consuming andrequires technical expertise.

Objective

To provide an implementation where one can easily deploysimple social simulation models in a distributed environmentwith minimum effort.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 3 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Objectives

Introduction

The Problem

Even for simple simulation models, exploring a big parameterspace is computationally expensive.

Configuring a High-performance cluster is time consuming andrequires technical expertise.

Objective

To provide an implementation where one can easily deploysimple social simulation models in a distributed environmentwith minimum effort.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 3 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Grid Computing

Grid Computing

A computer grid is simply a set of networked loosely coupledcomputers acting together to perform very large tasks [6].

A grid of computers executes working units called Jobs.

Jobs have multiple independent tasks that can be executedseparately.

Grid VS Cluster

Loosely Coupled VS Tightly Coupled Processing units.

Grids contain heterogeneous resources that can begeographically distributed.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 4 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Grid Computing

Grid Computing

A computer grid is simply a set of networked loosely coupledcomputers acting together to perform very large tasks [6].

A grid of computers executes working units called Jobs.

Jobs have multiple independent tasks that can be executedseparately.

Grid VS Cluster

Loosely Coupled VS Tightly Coupled Processing units.

Grids contain heterogeneous resources that can begeographically distributed.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 4 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Grid Computing

Grid Computing

A computer grid is simply a set of networked loosely coupledcomputers acting together to perform very large tasks [6].

A grid of computers executes working units called Jobs.

Jobs have multiple independent tasks that can be executedseparately.

Grid VS Cluster

Loosely Coupled VS Tightly Coupled Processing units.

Grids contain heterogeneous resources that can begeographically distributed.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 4 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Simulation Platforms

Simulation Platforms

NetLogo [7] allows for the execution of multiple experimentsin a single machine, limited by the number of cores a machinepossesses.

MASON [5] is a Java-based framework optimized for runningefficiently in a single thread ,we can however distributesimulation runs across multiple processing units.

Repast Simphony, a suit of platforms for agent-basedmodelling and simulation.

JADE is a Java based agent middleware that supportsdistributed agent communication.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 5 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Simulation Platforms

Simulation Platforms

NetLogo [7] allows for the execution of multiple experimentsin a single machine, limited by the number of cores a machinepossesses.

MASON [5] is a Java-based framework optimized for runningefficiently in a single thread ,we can however distributesimulation runs across multiple processing units.

Repast Simphony, a suit of platforms for agent-basedmodelling and simulation.

JADE is a Java based agent middleware that supportsdistributed agent communication.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 5 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Simulation Platforms

Simulation Platforms

NetLogo [7] allows for the execution of multiple experimentsin a single machine, limited by the number of cores a machinepossesses.

MASON [5] is a Java-based framework optimized for runningefficiently in a single thread ,we can however distributesimulation runs across multiple processing units.

Repast Simphony, a suit of platforms for agent-basedmodelling and simulation.

JADE is a Java based agent middleware that supportsdistributed agent communication.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 5 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Simulation Platforms

Simulation Platforms

NetLogo [7] allows for the execution of multiple experimentsin a single machine, limited by the number of cores a machinepossesses.

MASON [5] is a Java-based framework optimized for runningefficiently in a single thread ,we can however distributesimulation runs across multiple processing units.

Repast Simphony, a suit of platforms for agent-basedmodelling and simulation.

JADE is a Java based agent middleware that supportsdistributed agent communication.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 5 / 16

MASON Self-contained model

Figure : UML diagram describing a self-contained model constructedusing the MASON framework.

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

JPPF

On JPPF

JPPF (Java Parallel Processing Framework) [4], is anopen-source, Java-based, framework for parallel computing.

Figure : Basic components of a JPPF grid [4]

Node Candidates

Workstations

Computer Clusters

JPPF Grid Servers

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 7 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

JPPF

On JPPF

JPPF (Java Parallel Processing Framework) [4], is anopen-source, Java-based, framework for parallel computing.

Figure : Basic components of a JPPF grid [4]

Node Candidates

Workstations

Computer Clusters

JPPF Grid Servers

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 7 / 16

Combining MASON with JPPF

Figure : UML diagram describing the integration of a self-containedMASON model with the JFFP framework.

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Experiment Distribution Overview

Experiment Distribution

Figure : Parameter space parallel exploration process overview

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 9 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Grid Performance Tests

Job Execution Speedup

Figure : Speedup ratio observed for different numbers of tasks in a singlejob submission to a grid with 30 processing units. These processing unitscorrespond to two 8-core and seven dual-core computers.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 10 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Multiple Social Contexts

Multiple Social Contexts

In real social world scenarios, agents interact in multiplecomplex social relations with other agents and/or institutions.

Social relations may be of different kind and quality,possessing different topologies and social dynamics.

We model social spaces with multiple concurrent socialnetworks [3, 1, 2].

Research Context

We focus on the study of dynamic consequences of the topologicalstructures underlying social simulation scenarios.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 11 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Multiple Social Contexts

Multiple Social Contexts

In real social world scenarios, agents interact in multiplecomplex social relations with other agents and/or institutions.

Social relations may be of different kind and quality,possessing different topologies and social dynamics.

We model social spaces with multiple concurrent socialnetworks [3, 1, 2].

Research Context

We focus on the study of dynamic consequences of the topologicalstructures underlying social simulation scenarios.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 11 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Multiple Social Contexts

Multiple Social Contexts

In real social world scenarios, agents interact in multiplecomplex social relations with other agents and/or institutions.

Social relations may be of different kind and quality,possessing different topologies and social dynamics.

We model social spaces with multiple concurrent socialnetworks [3, 1, 2].

Research Context

We focus on the study of dynamic consequences of the topologicalstructures underlying social simulation scenarios.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 11 / 16

A Model of Context Switching

Figure : Example of context switching [2] considering two contexts forsocial agent denoted by the number 1. In this case, these contexts arecreated by two distinct physical spaces. Common nodes in bothneighbourhoods (like agent 2) represent an acquaintance of actor 1 inboth of them. The dashed circle represents the scope of each context.

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

Summary

We have reduced the time needed to explore the parameterexploration on simple social simulation experiments.

These grids are easy to construct and any computer can beharvested for its processing power.

The most time consuming process is still the analysis of hugeamounts of data.

Automatic dynamic simulation model analysis methods arestill in need.

Working Example

http://labmag.di.fc.ul.pt/n/guess/resources/parallel

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 13 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

References I

L Antunes, J Balsa, P Urbano, and H Coelho.Exploring context permeability in multiple social networks.In Proceedings of the World Congress on Social Simulation,2008.

Luis Antunes, Davide Nunes, Helder Coelho, Joao Balsa, andPaulo Urbano.Context Switching versus Context Permeability in MultipleSocial Networks.In Progress in Artificial Intelligence, volume 5816 of LectureNotes in Computer Science, pages 547–559, 2009.

Luis Antunes, Paulo Urbano, and Helder Coelho.Context Permeability.Sciences-New York, 2006.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 14 / 16

Introduction MASON + JPPF - An Implementation A Model of Multiple Social Contexts Summary

References II

Laurent Cohen.Jppf, 2005.

Sean Luke, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, Liviu Panait, Keith Sullivan,and Gabriel Balan.MASON: A Multiagent Simulation Environment.Simulation, 81(7):517–527, 2005.

Jarek Nabrzyski, Jennifer M. Schopf, and Jan Weglarz, editors.

Grid resource management: state of the art and future trends.Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, USA, 2004.

U. Wilensky.Netlogo.1999.

Davide Nunes, Luis Antunes (GUESS) MABS2012 15 / 16

Thank you for your attention

Questions?