What is the actor model in distributed systems?

What is the actor model in distributed systems?

The actor model is a conceptual model used in computer science to design systems that are concurrent and distributed. It treats 'actors' as the fundamental units of computation, which can send messages to each other, create new actors, and determine how to respond to messages.

How does it differ from traditional models?

Unlike traditional models that use shared state and locks for synchronization, the actor model avoids shared state and instead relies on message passing, which helps to eliminate many concurrency issues.

Can you give an example of where it's used?

Sure! The actor model is used in frameworks like Akka for building scalable and resilient applications, particularly in telecommunications and real-time data processing.

What are the advantages of using the actor model?

Some advantages include improved scalability, easier reasoning about concurrency, and better fault tolerance due to the isolation of actors.