Project: MESSENGERS AND NAVIGATIONAL PROGRAMMING

This project is developing a new programming paradigm, called Navigational Programming, for distributed systems based on the principles of autonomously migrating processes, called Messengers. Each Messenger is able to migrate among nodes of a local area network using explicit hop statements, which support strong migration. Unlike mobile agents used for a variety of services on the Internet, the MESSENGERS system is intended for general-purpose scientific computing.

Some of the advantages of migrating processes, as compared to stationary message-passing processes, are highlighted in the following Project Summary.

Participants

Faculty:

• Lubomir Bic
• Michael Dillencourt

PhD Students:

• Jiming Liu
• Ming Kin Lai
• Javid Huseynov
• Wendy Zhang
• OlgaRivero
• Matthew Badin

Recent PhD/MS Graduates:

• Munehiro Fukuda (University of Washington, Bothel)

Ph.D. Dissertation: MESSENGERS: A Distributed Computing System Based on Autonomous Objects (190 pages, Postscript), 1997

• Fehmina Merchant (IBM, New York)

Ph.D. Dissertation: Load Balancing in Spatial Individual-Based Systems using Autonomous Objects (143 pages, Postscript), 1998

• Susan Mabry (Whitworth College, Spokane, WA)

Ph.D. Dissertation: SimAgents: Migrating Agents for Simulation Models, 1999

• Katherine Morse (SAIC, San Diego, CA)

Ph.D. Dissertation: An Adaptive, Distributed Algorithm for Interest Management (216 pages, Postscript), 2000

• Adam Chi-Lun Chang

M.S. Thesis: Graphical Interface for Paradigm Oriented Distributed Computing (60 pages, PDF), 2000

• Eugene Gendelman (Bloomberg, New York, NY)

Ph.D. Dissertation: Virtual Infrastructure for Mobile Agent Computing (243 pages, Postscript), 2002

• Hairong Kuang (Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA)

Ph.D. Dissertation: Paradigm-Oriented Distributed Computing Using Mobile Agents (153 pages, Postscript), 2002

• Lei Pan (JPL, Pasadena, CA)

Ph.D. Dissertation (abstract): Navigational Programming, 2005

• Richard Utter (NSA, Washington, D.C.)

Ph.D. Dissertation: Diactoros: Full State Migration, (190 pages, PDF), 2006

• Koji Noguchi (Yahoo, Sunnyvale, CA)

Ph.D. Dissertation: Spontaneous Process Migration with Global Pointers, (160 pages, PDF), 2006

Visiting Students:

• Dominik Jergus (Fachhochshule Darmstadt, Germany) Diploma Thesis (61 pages, Postscript), 1997
• Christian Wicke (University of Karlsruhe, Germany) Diploma Thesis (81 pages, Postscript), 1998

Publications

1. Simulating Autonomous Objects in a Spatial Database (5 pages, Postscript), 9th European Simulation Multiconference, Prague, Czech Republic, June 1995

(Shows how autonomous objects can navigate in a simulated spatial environment)

2. Distributed Computing using Autonomous Objects (10 pages, Postscript), 5th IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems (FTDCS'95), Cheju Island, Korea, Aug. 1995

(This is similar to the subsequent article in IEEE COMPUTER (below) -- it presents potential application areas and surveys related approaches)

3. A Novel Approach to Toxicology Simulation based on Autonomous Objects (6 pages, Postscript), Conf. on Simulation in the Medical Sciences (part of SCS Western MultiConference), San Diego, Jan. 1996

(Discusses a specific simulation application for Toxicology)

4. Intra- and Inter-Object Coordination with MESSENGERS (18 pages, Postscript), First Int'l Conf. on Coordination Models and Languages (COORDINATION'96), Cesena, Italy, April 1996

(Presents MESSENGERS as a coordination paradigm for constructing distributed applications)

5. Distributed Computing using Autonomous Objects (16 pages, Postscript), IEEE COMPUTER, August 1996

(Surveys several lines of research related to aunonmous objects and coordination)

6. Performance of the MESSENGERS Autonomous-Objects-Based System (15 pages, Postscript), First Int'l Conf. on Worldwide Computing and Its Applications '97 (WWCA97), Tsukuba, Japan, March 10-11, 1997 (LNCS 1274, Springer-Verlag)

(Presents initial performance results)

7. Messages versus Messengers in Distributed Programming (8 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS-97), Baltimore, MD, May 1997

(Illustrates how navigational programming differs from message-passing and shows the advantages)

8. A Hierarchical Mapping Scheme for Mobile Agent Systems (6 pages, Postscript), 6th IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems (FTDCS'97), Tunis, Tunesia, Oct. 1997

(Discusses the mapping problem for MESSENGERS, that is, mapping of Messengers to logical nodes, logical nodes to daemon nodes, and daemon nodes to physical nodes. Presents new ways of load balancing, resource utilization, and granularity control)

9. Distributed Coordination with MESSENGERS (24 pages, Postscript), Science of Computer Programming Journal, Special Issue on Coordination Models, Languages, and Applications, 31(2), July 1998

(Presents the navigational calculus and shows how it is used to dynamically compose an application)

10. Mobile Network Objects (23 pages, Postscript), Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998

(An introductory overview of mobile agents technologies)

11. Octopus -- Interactive Visualization and Contol Environment for Mobile-Objects-Based Systems (61 pages, Postscript), Diploma thesis by D. Jergus (Fachhochschule Darmstadt, Germany), 1997

(Octopus is a tool superimposed on the MESSENGERS environment. It permits individual Messengers to periodically report information about themselves, e.g., their current position in a simulated space, which Octopus is able to display in real time for the purposes of visualization of the ongoing computation)

12. CVSys: A Coordination Framework for Dynamic and Fully Distributed Cardiovascular Modeling and Simulation

(8 pages, PDF), Int'l Biomedical Optics Symposium (BIOS'98), special section on Biomedical Sensing, Imaging and Tracking Technologoes, San Jose, CA, Jan. 1998
(Discusses a large biomedical application -- the simulation of a cardiovascular system)

13. Automatic State Capture of Self-Migrating Computations (6 pages, Postscript), ICSE98 Int'l Workshop on Computing and Communication in the Presence of Mobility, (Part of Int'l Conference on Software Engineering), Kyoto, Japan, April 1998

(Presents an approach to automatic state capture by restricting migration to the top coordination layer as implemented in the MESSENGERS system)

14. Global Virtual Time Support for Individual-Based Simulations (8 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'98), Las Vegas, Nevada, July 1998

(Discusses the advantages of having global virtual time support provided by the system when implementing individual-based simulations)

15. Automatic State Capture of Self-Migrating Computations in MESSENGERS (12 pages, Postscript), Second Int'l Workshop on Mobile Agents 98 (MA'98), Stuttgart, Germany, September 1998

(Discusses the implementation of fully transparent state capture and restoration for the purposes of migration or local context switch. This is possible even under a fully compiled version of the MESSENGERS system)

16. Load Balancing in Individual-Based Spatial Applications (8 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT'98), Paris, France, Oct. 1998

(Presents three specific algorithms to do load balancing in applications where a group of individuals (or particles) move autonomously through a simulated environment and perform some coordinated group movement. Shows performance evaluation of these algorithms.)

17. Messages versus Messengers in Distributed Programming (33 pages, Postscript), Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 57, 188-211, 1999

(A more extensive version of the paper with the same title presented at ICDCS'97 -- see above -- it illustrates how navigational programming differs from message-passing and shows the advantages both qualitatively and quantitatively)

18. Introducing Dynamic Data Structure into Mobile Agents (7 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'99), Las Vegas, Nevada, July 1999

(Introduces a special abstract data type into MESSENGERS. The dynamic structures belonging to a Messenger are carried automatically whenever the Messenger hops between nodes)

19. Compiling for Fast State Capture of Mobile Agents (8 pages, Postscript), Parallel Computing '99 (ParCo99), Delft, The Netherlands, Aug. 1999

(A new approach to state capture/restoration of a mobile agent during migration)

20. Self-Migrating Threads for Multi-Agent Applications (8 pages, Postscript), Int'l Workshop on Cluster Computing (IWCC'99), Melbourne, Australia, Dec. 2, 1999

(A cluster computing paradigm that combines navigational autonomy of agents with fine granutality of threads)

21. Efficient Checkpointing Algorithm for Distributed Systems with Reliable Communication Channels (2 pages, Postscript), IEEE Symp. on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS'99), Lausanne, Switzerland, Oct. 1999
22. Bridging Semantics Gaps with Migrating Agents (6 pages, PDF), Int'l Conf. on Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems (PDCS'99), Cambridge, MA, Nov. 1999
23. PODS: Paradigm-Oriented Distributed Computing (7 pages, Postscript), 7th IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems (FTDCS'99), Cape Town, South Africa, Dec. 1999
24. Modeling Cardiovascular Flow with a Migrating Agent Systems (6 pages, PDF), Int'l Conf. on Health Sciences Simulation, San Diego, CA, Jan. 2000
25. Paradigm-Oriented Distributed Computing Using Mobile Agents (9 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS-2000), Taipei, Taiwan, April 2000
26. An Application-Transparent, Platform-Independent Approach to Rollback-Recovery for Mobile Agent Systems (8 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS-2000), Taipei, Taiwan, April 2000
27. Superboundary Exchange: A Technique for Reducing Communication in Distributed Implementations of Interactive Computations (15 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing (ICA3PP-2000), Hong Kong, December 2000
28. Process Interconnection Structures in Dynamically Changing Topologies (10 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on High Performance Computing (HiPC-2000), Bangalore, India, December 2000
29. Distributed Sequential Computing Using Mobile Code: Moving Computation to Data (8 pages, PDF), Int'l Conf. on Parallel Processing (ICPP-01), Valencia, Spain, September 2001
30. Fast File Access for Fast Agents (15 pages, Postscript), Int'l Conf. on Mobile Agents (MA2001), Atlanta, GA, Dec. 2001
31. MESSENGERS: Distributed Programming Using Mobile Agents (17 pages, PDF), Transaction of the Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS), Vol. 5, No. 4, Dec. 2001
32. Shared Variable Programming Beyond Shared Memory: Bridging Distributed Memory with Mobile Agents (11 pages, PDF), The Sixth International Conference on Integrated Design and Process Technology (IDPT02),  Pasadena, CA, June 2002
33. Communication Reduction in Iterative Grid-based Computing Using SuperBoundary Exchange Technique (6 pages, Postscript), The 20th IASTED International Multi-Conference Applied Informatics (AI-2002), Innsbruck, Austria, February, 2002
34. Iterative Grid-based Computing Using Mobile Agents (9 pages. Postscript), International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP-2002), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August, 2002
35. Mobile Agents -- The Right Vehicle for Distributed Sequential Computing (10 pages, PDF), Int'l Conf. on High Performance Computing (HiPC-2002), Bangalore, India, December 2002
36. Distributed Parallel Computing Using Navigational Programming: Orchestrating Computations Around Data (6 pages, PDF), Int'l Conf. on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems (PDCS 2002), Cambridge, MA, November 2002
37. Estimation of Multimedia Inorganic Arsenic Intake in the U.S. Population (25 pages, PDF), Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, Vol. 8, No. 7, pp. 1697-1721, 2002
38. GIDM: Globally-Indexed Distributed Memory (7 pages, Postscript), 9th IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems (FTDCS 2003), San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 2003
39. Facilitating Agent Navigation Using DSM - High Level Designs (11 pages, PDF), The Seventh World Conference on Intergrated Design & Process Technology (IDPT03),  Houston, TX, Dec 2003
40. A Mobile-Agent-Based PC Grid (9 pages, Postscript), The 5th Annual International Workshop on Active Middleware Services (AMS2003),  Seattle, WA, June 2003
41. From Distributed Sequential Computing to Distributed Parallel Computing (8 pages, PDF), The 5th Workshop on High Performance Scientific and Engineering Computing with Applications (HPSECA-03), Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC, October 2003
42. NavP Versus SPMD: Two Views of Distributed Computation (8 pages, PDF), Int'l Conf. on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems (PDCS 2003), Marina del Ray, CA, November 2003
43. Distributed Sequential Computing (18 pages, PDF), Advanced Parallel and Distributed Computing. Series: Advances in Computation: Theory and Practice, Vol. 16, (Y. Pan and L.T. Yang, Eds.), Nova Science Publishers, Inc., New York, 2004
44. Distributed Parallel Computing Using Navigational Programming (37 pages, PDF), International Journal of Parallel Programming, Vol. 32, No. 1, Feb. 2004
45. PODC: Paradigm-Oriented Distributed Computing (13 pages, PDF), Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, No. 65, 2005 (www.sciencedirect.com)
46. Incremental Parallelization Using Navigational Programming: A Case Study (10 pages, PDF), International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP-2005), Oslo, Norway, June 2005
47. Mobile Pipelines: Parallelizing Left-Looking Algorithms Using Navigational Programming (12 pages, PDF), 12th IEEE Int'l Conf. on High Performance Computing (HiPC-2005), Goa, India, December 2005
48. Toward Incremental Parallelization, (9 pages PDF), IEICE Trans. Inf. & Syst., Vol. E89-D, No. 2, pp. 390-398, Feb. 2006
49. Toward Automatic Data Distribution for Migrating Computations (8 pages, PDF), Int'l Conf. on Parallel Processing (ICPP 07), Xian, China, Sept. 2007
50. Efficient Global Pointers With Spontaneous Process Migration (8 pages, PDF), The 16th Euromicro Conference on Parallel Distributed and Network-based Processing (PDP 2008), Toulouse, France, February 2008

Technical Reports

• MESSENGERS: A Distributed Computing Environment for Autonomous Objects
• UCI Technical Report: TR-96-20, 1996
  (Contains additional details of MESSENGERS and its implementation)
• Interest Management in Large-Scale Distributed Simulations
• UCI Technical Report: TR-96-27, 1996
  (Surveys approaches to information filtering in distributed interactive simulation, which is one application area for MESSENGERS)
• Distributed Individual-Based Simulation Using Autonomous Objects
• UCI Technical Report: TR-97-46, 1998
  (Describes the MESSENGERS virtual time environment and demonstrates its programmability and performance)
• CVSys: A First Prototype of a Distributed and Dynamic Cardiovascular Simulation System
• UCI Technical Report: TR-98-08, 1998
  (Presents the design of a MESSENGERS-based simulation of the cardiovascular system)
• Mobile Agents - The Right Vehicle for Distributed Sequential Computing
• UCI Technical Report: TR-01-68, 2001
• Incremental Parallelization Using Navigational Programming: A Case Study
• UCI Technical Report: TR-05-04, 2005
• Mobile Pipelines: Parallelizing Left-Looking Algorithms Using Navigational Programming
• UCI Technical Report: TR-05-12, 2005

There are two independent versions of MESSENGERS: MESSENGERS-I, and MESSENGERS-C, where "I" stands for "interpreted", and "C" stands for "compiled". The MESSENGERS-C is faster than MESSENGERS-I, but MESSENGERS-I has a Virtual Time support.

User Manuals and System Installation for MESSENGERS-C

• MESSENGERS-C (Version 2.1) User Manual provides a description of the MESSENGERS-C (Version 2.1) functionality and installation.
• MESSENGERS-C (Version 1.2.04) User Manual provides a description of the MESSENGERS-C (Version 1.2.04) functionality and installation (stable version).
• MESSENGERS-C (Version 1.2.05) User Manual provides a description of the MESSENGERS-C (Version 1.2.05) functionality and installation (experimental version).
• Net Creator User Manual describes tools that can be used to automatically create a logical network for MESSENGERS-C system
• Graph Creator User Manual describes yet another, graphical tool that can be used for logical network creation. The files output by GraphCreator should be used as input to the NetScheduler program, described in the "Net Creator User Manual"
• The MESSENGERS software may be obtained free of charge for non-commercial purposes.

User Manuals and System Installation for MESSENGERS-I

• MSGR01 MESSENGERS User's Manual
• MSGR02 MESSENGERS System Library
• MSGR03 MESSENGERS Daemon Design Book
• MSGR04 MESSENGERS: Intermediate Code Specification
• MSGR05 MLEX: The MESSENGERS Assembler
• MSGR06 MESSENGERS-C Compiler
• The MESSENGERS software may be obtained free of charge for non-commercial purposes. Installation instructions are given in MSGR01: MESSENGERS User's Manual. If you are interested in installing/using MESSENGERS on your system, please send a message to mfukuda@u.washington.edu to receive a decryption keyword.