Chemical-oriented simulation of computational systems with ALCHEMIST

Abstract

In this paper we address the engineering of complex and emerging computational systems featuring situatedness, adaptivity and self-organisation, like pervasive computing applications in which humans and devices, dipped in a very mobile environment, opportunistically interact to provide and exploit information services. We adopt a meta-model in which possibly mobile, interconnected and communicating agents work according to a set of chemical-like laws. According to this view, substantiated by recent research on pervasive computing systems, we present the Alchemist simulation framework, which retains the performance of known Stochastic Simulation Algorithms for (bio)chemistry, though it is tailored to the specific features of complex and situated computational systems.

Keywords:

• distribution
• pervasive systems
• simulation
• bio-inspiration

Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the EU-FP7-FET Proactive project SAPERE Self-aware Pervasive Service Ecosystems, under contract no.256873

Notes

1 http://alchemist.apice.unibo.it.

2 An example, built on the code we used for the case study in Section 5, is available through the ALCHEMIST website.