[kepler-dev] FSMDirector and wire issues

Tue Sep 4 11:11:57 PDT 2007

Hi Edward,
      thanks for looking into these issues. I was using the wire because I
have 2 currency feeds and I want them both to be inputs into a modal model.
When I get a market data update from either of them then I want to process
the latest value from both of them. I've just taken a quick look at the
latest version of our model and the person working on it is now using  a
sampler, so it would appear that it does indeed perform an equivalent
function.

Now for today's issue...

I have a DEDomain and it contains a modal model. I say I want to animate
the state of the FSM in the Modal model with a delay of 500ms so that I can
track what state it is currently in. The problem is that when you run the
model the state machine loses it's highlighting. The initial state will be
highlighted red and, when a transition happens, the new state will flash
red ... but then the highlight will be lost. The only way to find the
current state is to listen to the state machine and scroll back up the log
:-( I suspect that there is some bad interaction happening between the main
view of the state machine and the small view in the lower left, but that's
just a guess.

Ian

             "Edward A. Lee"                                               
             <eal at eecs.berkele                                             
             y.edu>                                                     To 
                                       ian.brown at hsbcib.com                
             04/09/2007 17:24                                           cc 
             Mail Size: 7936           kepler-dev at ecoinformatics.org       
                                                                   Subject 
                                       Re: [kepler-dev] FSMDirector and    
                                       wire issues                         
                                                                    Entity 
                                       Investment Banking Europe - IBEU    

Ian,

Thanks for reporting these issues.
One resolution and one question.

At 01:03 AM 8/31/2007, ian.brown at hsbcib.com wrote:
>...
>
>The issues are as follows:
>
>1) The wire actor in the DEDomain would appear to be broken. It has a
>parameter for an initial value but this is never used - it is stored but
it
>is not used when initialising the output array. This results in a null
>pointer exception when you try to use it with true asynchronous events on
>the input. It would only work if the initial inputs arrived at the same
>time.

This actor was never finished, and shouldn't have been in
the library.  I finished it, and added a test,
so it now works, but then realized
that its behavior is essentially the same as Sampler...
I don't see a real use for it.  Am I wrong about this?

>2) The FSMDirector changes the workspace version on a transition. I have a
>DEDirector with a FSM modal model in it. In this model is another
>DEDirector. Events come in at about every 50 milliseconds and for each
>event we have on average 2 state transitions. Due to the workspace
>increment (see line 579 in FSMDirector.java) when DEDirector.fireAt() is
>next called (which is called by FSMDirector.postfire()) the entire DAG is
>rebuilt by DEDirector.getDepthOfActor().
>This obviously decimates the performance (there is more than an order of
>magnitude difference than when the state transition is not taken) and I
>don't think it should be necessary. Can someone who knows the code please
>comment - I am happy to investigate the change but would like to
understand
>the background reasoning for the current implementation first.

Yes, this is completely bogus... There is a FIXME there,
which unfortunately will be a fair amount of work to fix...
I'll take this on, however, since being able to use FSM in DE
is very important (particularly for our own PTIDES work).

Edward

>As a general comment, what we're doing here is slightly different than
what
>Kepler / Ptolemy was designed for. Rather then just simulation, we using
it
>to run a real live system in addition to running it in simulation mode
with
>historical data. I'm happy to report that so far it looks like it can do
>this and is more capable than equivalent commercial systems I have looked.
>Well done to all of the developers!
>
>As a last point, can I request a read access account for the Kepler source
>code please.
>
>Ian
>
>
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------------
Edward A. Lee
Chair of EECS and Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor
231 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1770
phone: 510-642-0253, fax: 510-642-2845
eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal

************************************************************
HSBC Bank plc may be solicited in the course of its placement efforts for a
new issue, by investment clients of the firm for whom the Bank as a firm
already provides other services. It may equally decide to allocate to its
own proprietary book or with an associate of HSBC Group. This represents a
potential conflict of interest. HSBC Bank plc has internal arrangements
designed to ensure that the firm would give unbiased and full advice to the
corporate finance client about the valuation and pricing of the offering as
well as internal systems, controls and procedures to identify and manage
conflicts of interest.

HSBC Bank plc
Registered Office: 8 Canada Square, London E14 5HQ, United Kingdom
Registered in England - Number 14259
Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
************************************************************