Distributed sequential computing using mobile code: Moving computation to data

Sequential computations can benefit from a distributed environment consisting of a network of workstations through the use of a mobile agent system. We found significant performance improvement when sequential algorithms for solving large industrial problems are implemented using mobile agents. This is because raw data is distributed so that the cost of disk paging is completely eliminated, and a principle of "code moving to data" is followed to achieve efficient communication through the network. We argue that mobile agent systems provide a new level of abstraction in which application programming is made easier because the sequential algorithms remain essentially unchanged in mobile agent code.