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by eadan 2195 days ago
Thanks for your response! This technology is very exciting. Since you're targeting WASM there's a whole host of possibilities. Python is already supported through Iodide [1], but I imagine other languages could also be ported, and even DSLs specifically tailored for agent based modelling. That's not the mention all the other things happening in the WASM space like webgpu [2] and WASI [3].

The potential for ABMs are huge now that we have access to cheap and massively parallel compute. Imagine arbitrarily complex models of each individual in an economy interacting with each other over a distributed network of thousands of machines -- that's possible now. Instead of trying to predict the future, we can compute it.

[1] https://github.com/iodide-project/pyodide

[2] https://github.com/gpuweb/gpuweb/wiki/Implementation-Status

[3] https://wasi.dev/

1 comments

The Python simulations we run in-browser are indeed using Pyodide in part! It's brilliant, but there's quite a performance penalty at present. We're working on some optimizations, but right now running the engine locally or offloading to the cloud are the only places real scale can be achieved. That said we're thrilled that Python-in-browser is possible at all, and excited at how many high-quality complementary projects are in the works. It really does feel like "everything is coming together" :)