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Actors

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Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing

Definition

Actors is a model of concurrent computation for developing parallel, distributed, and mobile systems. Each actor is an autonomous object that operates concurrently and asynchronously, receiving and sending messages to other actors, creating new actors, and updating its own local state. An actor system consists of a collection of actors, some of whom may send messages to, or receive messages from, actors outside the system.

Preliminaries

An actor has a name that is globally unique and a behavior which determines its actions. In order to send an actor a message, the actor’s name must be used; a name cannot be guessed but it may be communicated in a message. When an actor is idle, and it has a pending message, the actor accepts the message and does the computation defined by its behavior. As a result, the actor may take three types of actions: send messages, create new actors, and updateits local state. An actor’s behavior may change as it modifies its local state. Actors do...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Rajesh K. Karmani (Dr.) & Gul Agha (Professor)

Authors
  1. Rajesh K. Karmani
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  2. Gul Agha
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    David Padua

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Karmani, R.K., Agha, G. (2011). Actors. In: Padua, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09766-4_125

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