Parallel cellular programming for developing massively parallel emergent systems

In an emergent system higher level properties cannot be deduced to its simpler constitutes or its origins. The global behavior of an emergent system emerges from the single elements evolution and interaction. Emergent phenomena and systems need to be programmed by using paradigms that allow for expressing the behavior and interaction of a very large number of single simple elements. The cellular automata model is a nature inspired parallel computational model that can be used for modeling and simulation of emergent phenomena and systems. Because of their inherent parallelism, cellular automata can be used to model large scale emergent systems on parallel computers. The use of parallel cellular languages and environments can provide useful tools for the development of massively parallel emergent systems. This paper describes the cellular automata approach for developing large scale scalable emergent systems and discusses practical parallel cellular automata tools for programming emergence. Examples of emergent systems programmed in CARPET are discussed and their performance is evaluated on a Linux cluster.