Actor Model

External

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model_theory
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_passing
• http://www.brianstorti.com/the-actor-model/
• https://anthonylebrun.silvrback.com/actors-vs-objects

Internal

• Software Architecture
• Object-Oriented Programming

Overview

The actor model is a mathematical model for concurrent computation. The model's primitive is the actor, which is an entity that sends and receives messages. The essence of the model is that individual actors maintain state independently of each other and passing messages to each other.

Concepts

Actor

An actor is a computation unit that maps each received message to:

1. a finite set of messages sent to other actors.
2. a new behavior - which will govern the response to the next messages.
3. a finite set of new actors created.

The actor embodies all three essential elements of computation: processing, storage and communication.

An actor has an address, so other actor can send messages to it.