Natalie Glance, Tad Hogg and Bernardo A. Huberman
Dynamics of Computation Group
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto, CA 94304
hogg@parc.xerox.com
@ARTICLE {,
AUTHOR = "Natalie Glance and Tad Hogg and Bernardo A. Huberman",
TITLE = "Computational Ecosystems in a Changing Environment",
JOURNAL = "Intl. J. of Modern Physics C",
VOLUME = "2",
NUMBER = "3",
PAGES = "735-753",
YEAR = "1991"}
We study the adaptive behavior of a computational ecosystem in the
presence of time-periodic resource utilities as seen, for example, in
the day-night load variations of computer use and in the price
fluctuations of seasonal products. We do so within the context of the
Huberman-Hogg model of such systems. The dynamics is studied for the
cases of competitive and cooperative payoff functions with
time-modulated resource utilities, and the system's adaptability is
measured by tracking its performance in response to a time-varying
environment.
Keywords: non-linear dynamics, distributed computation, adaptability.
postcript (599K, available on-line only within Xerox)