clarke@utcsri.UUCP (Jim Clarke) (07/08/85)
COMPUTER SYSTEMS SEMINAR, Thursday, July 18, 11:00 am, SF 1105
(SF = Sandford Fleming Building, 10 King's College Road)
Dr. Peter de Jong
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, M.I.T.
The Message Passing Semantics Project
The Message Passing Semantics Project at MIT is producing a parallel compu-
tational architecture in which the basic unit of computation is a message
triggered object called an ACTOR. Included in the project is a machine
architecture - the APIARY, a debugging and measuring system - the OBSERVA-
TORY, a low level programming language - SCRIPTER, a high level programming
language - ACT3, a reasoning system which consists of a description
language - OMEGA, and a demon system called SPRITES.
The goal of the project is to produce an integrated system in which all
parts can run parallel on multiple machines, where the machines can range
from closely to loosely coupled. The reasoning system is the major appli-
cation being built on the APIARY machines. The descriptions within the
reasoning system form a lattice which supports multiple-inheritance of con-
cepts. Integrated with the description lattice are the SPRITEs which
trigger by pattern matching messages. The SPRITEs enable the system to
reason over multiple descriptions systems, pursuing multiple goals in
parallel.
Various models of organizations have been developed by the project to gain
insight into parallel reasoning. Two such models are the Scientific Com-
munity Metaphor, and Open Systems. In addition formal models of ACTOR com-
putation have been created.