Distributed Problem Solving: The Contract Net Approach
Abstract
The ongoing revolution in LSI technology is drastically reducing the cost of computer components, making multiple processor architectures economically viable. These architectures have the potential to provide several computational advantages over uniprocessor architectures, including speed, reliability, and efficient matching of available processing power to problem complexity. This has led to a search for problem solving methods which can exploit the new technology. This paper presents one approach to problem solving in such architectures. The paper proposes a model of a distributed problem solver which consists of a collection of processors connected with communications and control mechanisms that enable them to operate concurrently, and enable them to cooperate in solving complex problems. The term 'distributed' rather than 'parallel' is used to emphasize that the individual processors are loosely-coupled; that is, the time a processor node spends in communication is small with respect to the time it spends in computation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1978
- Accession Number
- ADA060795
Entities
People
- Randall Davis
- Reid G. Smith
Organizations
- Stanford University