Inter-Image communication in Smalltalk. Possible?

Question

I have a graph-traversal problem that is beautifully and elegantly modeled in smalltalk, but it's too big (in terms of computation and storage) for one smalltalk image instance. So, I want to partition the problem across multiple instances.

My question is, is there any good way to send messages between smalltalk instances. Kind of like MPI, but for smalltalk.

I should mention that I'm on Squeak, but if there is some flavor of smalltalk with this feature, I can cope.

Answer 1

There is a project named Hydra underway, with a goal to make a Squeak multi-core capable. One of the main features of Hydra are also the inter-image communication channels.

Some more information:

• Qwaq releases Hydra multi-core Squeak VM
• HydraVM devnotes
• [squeak-dev] [ANN] Hydra now can do mitosis

Answer 2

Have a look at Remote Smalltalk.

Answer 3

Open Croquet is conceptually a bunch of Smalltalk images communicating with each other. Maybe it, and its Islands, might be a good fit?