Skip to main content

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 216))

Abstract

This paper belongs to a research work that develops a deterministic actor framework in Java named Theatre, which addresses the modeling, analysis, and implementation of time-critical, cyber-physical systems. Theatre distinguishes from other actor systems by being control-based, time-sensitive, and centered on not thread-based actors. Although its main orientation to real-time embedded systems, Theatre can also be exploited for building high-performance applications on nowadays multi-core machines with shared memory. This paper reports an experience of performance comparison of Theatre with the Akka actor toolkit, through a parallel and scalable version of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma multi-agent system. Akka is a well-known library implemented in Scala and Java, which efficiently supports classical actors and it is best suited to untimed distributed applications. The experimental work confirms the lightweight nature of Theatre and its concurrent/parallel lock-free computational model, are also a key for achieving high execution performance, even better than that provided by Akka and similar toolkits, when large-scale systems are considered.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 189.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Lee EA (2006) The problem with threads. Computer 39:33–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Nigro L (2021) Parallel theatre: an actor framework in Java for high-performance computing. Simul Model Pract Theory 106 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.simpat.2020.102189

  3. Agha G (1986) Actors: a model of concurrent computation in distributed systems. PhD Thesis, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

    Google Scholar 

  4. Nigro L, Sciammarella PF (2018) Qualitative and quantitative model checking of distributed probabilistic timed actors. Simul Model Pract Theory 87:343–368

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Cicirelli F, Nigro L, Sciammarella PF (2020) Seamless development in Java of distributed real-time systems using actors. Int J Sim Process Modelling 15(1/2):13–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Java Akka https://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/current/actors.html?language=java

  7. Cohen MD, Riolo RL, Axelrod R (1999) The emergence of social organization in the Prisoner's Dilemma: how context-preservation and other factors promote cooperation, Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 1999–01–002, also Psycology

    Google Scholar 

  8. Hewitt C, Bishop P, Steiger R (1973) A universal modular Actor formalism for artificial intelligence. In: 3rd International Joint Conference on artificial intelligence (IJCAI), pp 235–245

    Google Scholar 

  9. Karmani RK, Shali A, Agha G (2009) Actor frameworks for the JVM platform: a comparative analysis. In: 7th International Conference on principles and practice of programming in Java (PPPJ ’09), pp 11–20

    Google Scholar 

  10. Srinivasan S, Mycroft A (2008) Kilim: isolation typed actors for Java. InL Proceedings of the European Conference on object oriented programming (ECOOP)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Astley M (1998) The ActorFoundry: a Java-based actor programming environment. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Open Systems Laboratory

    Google Scholar 

  12. Frantz C, Nowostawski M, Purvis M (2010) Multi-agent platforms and asynchronous message passing: frameworks overview. Tech Rep

    Google Scholar 

  13. Rettig M (2020) Jetlang https://github.com/jetlang. Accessed Nov 2020

  14. Bauer DA, Mäkiö J (2018) Actor4j: a software framework for the actor model focusing on the optimization of message passing. In: AICT 2018, 14th Advanced International Conference on Telecommunications. IARIA

    Google Scholar 

  15. Cicirelli F, Nigro L (2020) Using deterministic theatre for energy management in smart environments. Chapter of forthcoming Springer book “Intelligent Sustainable Systems”, Springer ASST Series on Advances in Sustainability Science and Technology, ISSN:2662–6829

    Google Scholar 

  16. Wooldridge M (2009) An introduction to multi-agent systems. 2nd edn. John Wiley & Sons

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Franco Cicirelli .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Cicirelli, F., Nigro, C., Nigro, L., Pupo, F. (2022). Performance Comparison of Two Java-Based Actor Systems. In: Yang, XS., Sherratt, S., Dey, N., Joshi, A. (eds) Proceedings of Sixth International Congress on Information and Communication Technology. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 216. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-1781-2_9

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics