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Vaclav Pech posted on Sep 06, 2014
This is quick overview of Remoting for GPars realized during Google Summer of Code 2014 by Rafal Slawik. More details can be found in the official documentation in section on Remoting. The implementation has already been made part of GPars 1.3-SNAPSHOT is is available for immediate use.
Behind the scenes, the Netty library and the standard serialization mechanism were used as the transportation layer. Basically, you can use Dataflows with any data type, send custom messages to Actors and store custom states in Agents as long as these objects are seralizable.
The Dataflow structures that support remoting: DataflowVariable, DataflowBroadcast, DataflowQueue.
General use of our remoting implementation requires:
- at host A: creating a context and publishing a structure (variable, queue, actor, etc.) under some name
- at host B: creating a context and retrieval of a structure with that name
The context concept is useful for testing (one can have original instance and a remote proxy withing that same VM) or other purposes (eg. each thread has its own remote proxy). What's important, such a remote proxy has the same interface and therefore can be used like if it was a regular intstance. Let's see an example on how to use remoting for DataflowVariables:
-
At host A:
def remoteDataflows = RemoteDataflows.create() // creates context remoteDataflows.startServer HOST PORT // starts server that waits for requests at HOST:PORT def variable = new DataflowVariable() // creates variable instance remoteDataflows.publish variable "my-first-variable" // registers it within the context under given name
-
At host B:
def remoteDataflows = RemoteDataflows.create() // creates context def remoteVariablePromise = remoteDataflows.getVariable HOST, PORT, "my-first-variable" // retrieves promise of variable with given name def remoteVariable = remoteVariablePromise.get() // extracts remote proxy from promise
You can find more examples in samples package: groovyx.gpars.samples.remote.dataflow.*
Now, let's take a look at remoting for Actors and consider Ping-Pong example (groovyx.gpars.samples.remote.actor.pingpong). Let's start with creating an actor that responds to every message with "PONG". Such actor can look as follows:
def pongActor = Actors.actor { loop { react { println it reply "PONG" } } }
It waits in loop from messages and when one arrives it prints it and replies with "PONG". To be able to access this actor from remote host it has to be published:
def remoteActors = RemoteActors.create() // creates context
remoteActors.startServer HOST, PORT // starts server that waits for requests at HOST:PORT
remoteActors.publish pongActor, "pong" // registers pongActor within context under name "pong"
What's left is to retrieve the proxy object to that actor at remote host. It can be done as follows:
def remoteActors = RemoteActors.create() // creates context
def pingActor = Actors.actor {
def remotePongActor = remoteActors.get HOST, PORT, "pong" get() // gets remote proxy to actor name "pong" at HOST:PORT
remotePongActor << "PING" // sends message to it
react {
println it // prints reply from remote actor
}
}
An extended example can be found in groovyx.gpars.samples.remote.actor.pingpong. More examples of remoting for Actors are available in groovyx.gpars.samples.remote.actor.*. An example of remoting for Agents is available in groovyx.gpars.samples.remote.agent.
In the future we can introduce multiplexing of connections between hosts (currenly each get opens new connection) and some discovery mechanism (to avoid using explicit HOST:PORT).
Vaclav Pech posted on Jul 25, 2013
The GA release of GPars 1.1.0 has just been published and is ready for you to grab. It brings gradual improvements into dataflow as well as a few other domains. Some highlights:
- LazyDataflowVariable added to allow for lazy asynchronous values
- Timeout for Selects
- Added a Promise-based API for value selection through the Select class
- Enabled listening for bind errors on DataflowVariables
- Minor API improvement affecting Promise and DataflowReadChannel
- Protecting agent's blocking methods from being called from within commands
- Updated to the latest 0.7.0 GA version of Multiverse
- Migrated to Groovy 2.0
- Used @CompileStatic where appropriate
- A few bug fixes
You can download GPars 1.1.0 directly or grab it from the maven repo.
Have a lot of fun trying out GPars 1.1.0!
Vaclav Pech posted on Jul 17, 2013
A first release candidate for GPars 1.1.0 has been made available. The final 1.1.0 GA should be expected in a few days. The 1.1.0 release is a gradual improvement of 1.0.0 with additions mostly in the Dataflow domain. Starting with 1.1 GPars requires Groovy 2.0 or higher. Check out the most noteworthy new capabilities:
Dataflow
- LazyDataflowVariable added to allow for lazy asynchronous values
- Timeout for Selects
- Added a Promise-based API for value selection through the Select class
- Enabled listening for bind errors on DataflowVariables
- Minor API improvement affecting Promise and DataflowReadChannel
- Protecting agent's blocking methods from being called from within commands
- Updated to the latest 0.7.0 GA version of Multiverse
- Migrated to Groovy 2.0
- Used @CompileStatic where appropriate
Get GPars 1.1.0-rc1, take it for a spin and please report all issues so we can fix them before GA.
Vaclav Pech posted on Dec 19, 2012
I'm happy to announce that after four years of development GPars, the Groovy concurrency library, has just reached its 1.0 mark. A fresh and crispy GPars 1.0.0 is now ready for you to grab or download and use on your projects. Also, the up-coming Groovy releases will bundle GPars 1.0.
Compared to the previous release, 1.0 brings several performance enhancements, considerable API updates, polished documentation and numerous functionality improvements, mostly in the dataflow area. Please, check out the What's new section of the user guide for the details. Full [release notes](http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectI d=12030&version=17007) are also available.
I would like to use this opportunity to thank all the Groovy people, who have over time contributed in one way or another to the success of GPars. It is my honour to be part of such a helpful and encouraging community. In particular, I would like to thank my colleague GPars commiters, namely Paul King, Dierk Koenig, Alex Tkatchman and Russel Winder, who we've been consistently pushing the project forward and without whom it would hardly ever get this far. I also greatly appreciate the support we received from Guillaume Laforge, the Groovy supreme commander. Thank you all gentlemen!
Groovy concurrency times ahead!
Vaclav
Vaclav Pech posted on Dec 11, 2012
We are almost there. The 1.0 release is just round the corner. To ensure that 1.0 meets your quality expectations we first prepared a release candidate to test the waters. To take GPars for a test ride, please download or grab it at the usual places, check out the [release notes](http ://jira.codehaus.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12030&version=17007) and let us know if something is missing.
Vaclav
Vaclav Pech posted on Sep 10, 2012
GPars-1.0-beta-3 has been made available for you to try out. Apart from the usual doze of features and fixes, including speed-up for some operations on parallel collections or lifecycle events for dataflow operators, there is one major change compared to beta-2 worth pointing out explicitly:
- GPars no longer depends on the extra166y artifact. The parallel array library by Doug Lea has been integrated into GPars. The jsr166y (Fork/Join) jar still remains in the dependency list until we migrate GPars to jdk7.
Grab gpars-1.0-beta-3 and have a lot of fun with the new release.
Vaclav Pech posted on Dec 30, 2011
Our first step towards the 1.0 release has been achieved. The beta-1 release is now available for you to grab or download. Have fun and if you feel somethings needs our attention, please let us know.
The GPars team
Vaclav Pech posted on Sep 01, 2011
I'd like to direct you to my recent blog post detailing the use of Dataflow operators. It uses the popular Game of Life coding excercise to illustrate the principles of the dataflow concept. Check it out at my personal blog.
Vaclav Pech posted on Jun 02, 2011
We have some great news to all the parallel souls out there - GPars 0.12 has just hit the shelves. The new version comes with lots of big and small improvements, out of which these are the most notable ones:
- Composable asynchronous functions
- The newest version of Doug Lea's Fork/Join framework (aka jsr-166y)
- Active Objects
- Initial stub at Software Transactional Memory support using Multiverse
Check out the full [release notes](http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/ReleaseNote .jspa?projectId=12030&version=16994) for more details. To quickly get up-to-speed with GPars, check out our updated User Guide, which is now also available in pdf format.
Your GPars team
Vaclav Pech posted on Apr 26, 2011
Dr.Dobb's has just published my overview article on actors in GPars. You may check it out at http://drdobbs.com/high-performance-computing/229402193
Vaclav