Characterization of the Jason multiagent platform on multicore processors

Multiagent platforms need to be evaluated focusing on the underlying computer architecture in order to allow developers to exploit the parallelism available in multicore processors. This paper presents the characterization of Jason, a well-known Java-based multiagent platform, when executed on distributed shared memory architectures. Since this kind of architecture is already present in current multicore processors, this should be the first step for the characterization of this platform on distributed systems. To this end, we propose the execution of a set of benchmarks recently proposed for evaluating multiagent platforms. The results obtained show that Jason can be used to program CPU-intensive multiagent applications without loosing the Java scalability over multicore processors. Though, Jason's performance for communication-intensive applications depends on the traffic pattern generated by the agents, the layout of the cores and the selected execution mode i.e. synchronous or asynchronous.

[1]  Pawel Kaczmarek,et al.  Efficiency of JADE agent platform , 2005, Sci. Program..

[2]  Simin Nadjm-Tehrani,et al.  Scale-up and performance studies of three agent platforms , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Performance, Computing, and Communications, 2004.

[3]  Michael E. Bratman,et al.  Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason , 1991 .

[4]  Anand S. Rao,et al.  AgentSpeak(L): BDI Agents Speak Out in a Logical Computable Language , 1996, MAAMAW.

[5]  Olivier Boissier,et al.  Multi-agent oriented programming with JaCaMo , 2013, Sci. Comput. Program..

[6]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason (Wiley Series in Agent Technology) , 2007 .

[7]  Jose M. Such,et al.  Performance evaluation of open-source multiagent platforms , 2006, AAMAS '06.

[8]  Jürgen Dix,et al.  Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Tools and Applications , 2009 .

[9]  Frances M. T. Brazier,et al.  AgentScape: Middleware, Resource Management, and Services , 2002 .

[10]  Martyn Fletcher,et al.  Implementing Industrial Multi-agent Systems Using JACK , 2003, PROMAS.

[11]  William Lyons,et al.  Approaches to Intentionality , 1995 .

[12]  Pavel Vrba.  JAVA-Based Agent Platform Evaluation , 2003, HoloMAS.

[13]  Jacques Ferber,et al.  The MADKIT Agent Platform Architecture , 2000, Agents Workshop on Infrastructure for Multi-Agent Systems.

[14]  Hyacinth S. Nwana,et al.  The ZEUS Agent Building Tool-kit , 1998 .

[15]  Vicent J. Botti,et al.  A performance evaluation of three multiagent platforms , 2010, Artificial Intelligence Review.

[16]  Juan M. Orduña,et al.  Tuning Java to Run Interactive Multiagent Simulations over Jason , 2010, Australasian Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

[17]  D. Dennett.  The Intentional Stance. , 1987 .

[18]  Pawel Kaczmarek,et al.  Testing the efficiency of JADE agent platform , 2004, Third International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing/Third International Workshop on Algorithms, Models and Tools for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Networks.

[19]  Juan M. Orduña,et al.  Evaluating Jason for Distributed Crowd Simulations , 2010, ICAART.

[20]  J. Searle.  Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts , 1979 .