DMASON is a parallel version of the MASON library for writing and running simulations of Agent based simulation models.
Agent-based simulation models are an increasingly popular tool for research and management in many, different and diverse fields. In executing such simulations the “speed” is one of the most general and important issues. The traditional answer to this issue is to invest resources in deploying a dedicated installation of dedicated computers. DMASON is a parallel version of the MASON, a library for writing and running Agent-Based simulations. DMASON is designed to harness unused PCs for increased performances.
Why Distributed MASON?
Among the motivations to our focus on distributing the simulation on several machines, we can underline how the need for efficiency among the Agent-Based modeling tools is well recognized in literature: many reviews of state-of-the-art frameworks place “speed” upfront as one of the most general and important issues. While a consistent work has been done to allow the distribution of agents on several computing nodes, our approach here is different in principle: we want to introduce the distribution at the framework level, so that the scientists that use the framework (domain experts but with limited knowledge of computer programming and systems) can be unaware of such distribution.
Publications
Journals
- "Bringing together efficiency and effectiveness in distributed simulations: the experience with D-Mason" with Rosario De Chiara, Ada Mancuso, Dario Mazzeo, Vittorio Scarano and Carmine Spagnuolo. In SIMULATION: Transactions of The Society for Modeling and Simulation International (SIMULATION), doi: 10.1177/0037549713489594, 2013.
Conferences
- "Toward the new version of D-MASON: Efficiency, Effectiveness and Correctness in Parallel and Distributed Agent-based Simulations" with Cordasco G., Spagnuolo C. and Scarano V. In Proc. of 1st IEEE Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Processing for Computational Social Systems. IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), Chicago Hyatt Regency, Chicago, Illinois USA, May 23-27 2016.
- "On Evaluating Graph Partitioning Algorithms for Distributed Agent Based Models on Networks" with Alessia Antelmi, Carmine Spagnuolo and Luca Vicidomini. In Proc. of 3rd Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Agent-Based Simulations (PADABS2015). August 24, Vienna, 2015."
- "Exploiting D-MASON on Parallel Platforms: A Novel Communication Strategy" with Gennaro Cordasco, Francesco Milone, Carmine Spagnuolo and Luca Vicidomini . In Proc. of Euro-Par Workshops, PADABS 2014 2st Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Agent-Based Simulations. Porto, Portugal Aug 25, 2014.
- "Communication strategies in Distributed Agent-Based Simulations: the experience with D-MASON" with Gennaro Cordasco, Ada Mancuso, Francesco Milone, Carmine Spagnuolo. In Proc. of Euro-Par Workshops, PADABS 2013 1st Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Agent-Based Simulations. Aachen, Germany Aug 26, 2013.
- "Designing Computational Steering Facilities for Distributed Agent Based Simulations" with Rosario De Chiara, Francesco Raia, Vittorio Scarano, Carmine Spagnuolo and Luca Vicidomini. In Proc. of ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (PADS2013). Montreal, Canada. May 19-22, 2013.
- "Enhancing the Performances of D-Mason: a Motivating Example" with Michele Carillo, Rosario De Chiara, Francesco Raia, Vittorio Scarano and Flavio Serrapica. In Proc. of Simultech 2012. Rome, July 28-31.
- "A Framework for distributing Agent-based simulations" with Rosario De Chiara, Ada Mancuso, Dario Mazzeo, Vittorio Scarano and Carmine Spagnuolo. In Proc. of The International Workshop on Algorithms, Models and Tools for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Platforms (HeteroPar 2011). Bordeaux, France, Aug 29, 2011