FLAME: simulating large populations of agents on parallel hardware architectures

Abstract

High performance computing is essential for simulating complex problems using agent-based modelling (ABM). Researchers are hindered by complexities of porting models on parallel platforms andtime taken to run large simulations on a single machine. This paper presents FLAME framework, the only supercomputing framework which automatically produces parallelisable code to execute on different parallel hardware architectures. FLAME’s inherent parallelism allows large number of agents to be simulated in less time thancomparable simulation frameworks. The framework also handles the parallelisation of model code allowing modellers to run simulations on number of supported architectures. The framework has been well tested in various disciplines like biology and economics projects yielding successful research