Experimenting on complex-system models in the cloud

Mathieu Leclaire
Institut des Systémes Complexes, Paris Île de France


Large scale experimentations on models


Methods

Design of experiments on a space of parameters.

Calibration.

Methods

Genetic algorithms.

Sensitivity analysis.

Naturally parallel algorithms => leverage parallelism.

What does OpenMOLE do ?

It implements exploration algorithms.

It transparently delegates computational loads to massively parallel environments.

Upscaling

Prototype small
Experiment large

A naturally parallel formalism to design experiments.

Embed your model as a black box

C
R
C++
Java
Scala
Scilab
Octave
Python
Netlogo
...

Assign execution environments to tasks.

Run and control the workflow execution.

Download: http://www.openmole.org

Chromosome structuring

C++
2 days per simulation
1600 simulations
8.5 years / CPU

Junier et al., CTCF-mediated transcriptional regulation through cell type-specific chromosome organization in the β-globin locus, Nucleic Acids Research, 2012.

SimTRAP project

NetLogo
5 minutes per simulation
100000 simulations
1 year / CPU

PhD thesis of J. Figuel, Modélisation et simulation des comportements piétonniers dans les espaces de transport – Application aux échanges quai / train de voyageurs.

Simpop project

Scala
5 minutes per simulation
360 000 000 simulations
22 years / CPU

Reuillon et al., Algorithmes évolutionnaires sur grille de calcul pour le calibrage de modéles géographiques, proceedings of France Grilles 2012.