Akka.js: towards a portable actor runtime environment

Abstract

Multiple mature implementations of the actor model of concurrency exist. Besides several ones available for the Java Virtual Machine, there are others, for example, written in SmallTalk or in C++, targeting native platforms or other virtual machines. Recently, runtime environments for platforms such as GPUs have also appeared. However, so far, no full-featured, distributed actor runtime environment has allowed actor programs to run, unchanged, on both Java and JavaScript virtual machines. This paper describes our ongoing effort in providing a portable implementation of the widely-used Akka actor framework.