Open Heterogeneous Computing in Actorspace

Abstract

A number of efforts in heterogeneous computing involve the development of basic architecture independent communication primitives. We present a new programming paradigm, called ActorSpace, which provides a new communication model based on destination patterns. An actorspace is a computationally passive container of actors which acts as a context for matching patterns. Patterns are matched against listed attributes of actors and actorspaces that are visible in the actorspace. Both visibility and attributes are dynamic. Messages may be sent to one or all members of a group defined by a pattern. The paradigm provides powerful support for component-based construction of heterogeneous scalable distributed applications. In particular, it supports open interfaces to servers and pattern-directed access to software repositories.