Actors

Actor model

In computer science, there is a model of concurrent computation known as the actor model, in which an essential concept is the actor. This is a computational entity that, in response to a message it receives, can concurrently:

• Send a finite number of messages to other actors.

• Create a finite number of new actors.

• Designate the behavior to be used for the next message it receives.

Actors may modify their own private state but can only affect each other indirectly through messaging; therefore, there is no need to synchronize them. Each actor runs on a single thread and handles its messages one after another.