The most easily observed ant behavior is workers foraging for food. Foraging workers do not eat the food, but carry it back to the nest, where it is processed and consumed by all members of the colony. In many species, a high degree of coordination and cooperation between foragers is observed (usually mediated by pheromone communication). We would like to understand more about the evolution of cooperative foraging. In this paper, we describe a computer program called AntFarm, that simulates the evolution of foraging strategies in colonies of artificial organisms that resemble ants. AntFarm is work in progress, and is being used to investigate issues surrounding simulated evolution of complex behaviors in complex environments, the evolution of cooperation among closely related individuals, and the evolution of chemical communication. We describe our genetic algorithm for simulating evolution. We also discuss the issue of the representation of artificial organisms, and empirically compar...

UC is a data-parallel extension of C designed for scientific computations on synchronous and asynchronous parallel architectures. The primary constructs of the language include sets, reductions, and parallel and asynchronous composition. Its communication model is that of a globally addressable memory, with no syntactic distinction between local and remote data references. Unlike most existing data-parallel languages, UC programs may be synchronized at multiple levels of granularity, from a strict expression-level synchronization to a coarser statement or function-level synchronization. This paper describes the language and its implementation on the Connection Machine CM-2. Experimental measurements that compare the performance of the UC compiler with that of programs written in commercial parallel languages like CM Fortran, C, and Lisp are also presented. y This research was partially supported under NSF PYI Award No. ASC-9157610, ONR Grant No. N00014-91-J-1605, Rockwell Internation...