Distributed, parallel simulation of multiple, deliberative agents

Multi agent systems comprise multiple, deliberative agents embedded in and recreating patterns of interactions. Each agent´s execution consumes considerable storage and calculation capacities. For testing multi agent systems, distributed parallel simulation techniques are required that take the dynamic pattern of composition and interaction of multi-agent systems into account. Analyzing the behavior of agents in virtual, dynamic environments necessitates relating the simulation time to the actual execution time of agents. Since the execution time of deliberative components can hardly be foretold, conservative techniques based on lookahead are not applicable. On the other hand, optimistic techniques become very expensive if mobile agents and the creation and deletion of model components are affected by a rollback. The developed simulation layer of JAMES (a Java Based Agent Modeling Environment for Simulation) implements a moderately optimistic strategy which splits simulation and external deliberation into different threads and allows simulation and deliberation to proceed concurrently by utilizing simulation events as synchronization points