Introduction

Philote is a datastructure and communication standard for distributed multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) frameworks. As it is merely a datastructure and communication standard, it can be applied to a variety of MDO frameworks. An example of this are the Computational System Domain Language (CSDL) and OpenMDAO interfaces implemented in the Philote-Python bindings (see Supported Languages), which enable those frameworks to call remote analysis disciplines.

Motivation

A central aspect Philote addresses is decentralized computing. This requires a set of definitions for creating and communicating with decentralized disciplines. Moreover, Philote is intended to be a standard that supports many MDO frameworks. Ubiquitous support of frameworks enables discipline developers to develop one MDO interface that can be used with many MDO frameworks, thereby decoupling the framework and discipline development cycles.

Being decentralized requires a means of communication between the main framework and the individual analysis disciplines. Moreover, the individual disciplines may use a plethora of programming languages, some of which may not easily wrap into Python, as required by both CSDL and OpenMDAO. Therefore, Philote aims to define a standard for a server/client model for analysis disciplines using gRPC. Using gRPC enables the autogeneration of the required services and datastructures in a variety of languages. Philote, however, does not provide implementation beyond the protocol buffer (protobuf) definitions.

The definition of a data and communications standard allows Philote to be used beyond any one MDO tool. The absence of implementation beyond the auto-generated code allows for flexibility of use and development. However, the goal is to provide enough of an auto-generated template for analysis tool developers to easily implement MDO disciplines and couple them into a large variety of frameworks using the same communication mechanism. A number of examples can be found under the Supported Languages page.

Origin of the Project Name

Inevitably, people ask about the origin of project names, especially if they aren’t obviously discernable. The name “Philote” was chosen because of its relationship to the ansible network in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels (Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, etc.). In the series, Philotes are the most elementary building block in the universe and are used to enable faster than light communications over vast distances via the ansible network.