In the last post, I said that I want to make a world in which I can experiment with evolution. In this post, I’d like to talk about the software environment to do that.
I think the best language for doing this task is Python because the task would eventually require doing machine learning (including deep learning) with multiple agents. Python has a framework like OpenAI Gym that makes machine learning easy. It is also the most powerful language for deep learning because of the vast amount of libraries. In terms of pure speed, it is also competitive if you use modules like Numpy or Numba. (I tested running Conway’s game of life using Matlab, Python, and Julia and compared the speed. If you optimize, the speeds of Python and Julia were similar. Matlab was a bit slower (~x2) than the other two. I would omit the details of these experiments, but let me know if you are interested. I may write a post for that.)
I will use PyCharm to write the code. I was torn between VSCode and PyCharm, but PyCharm seemed to be easier for debugging. I also thought about Vim, but there were too many plugins to be installed to make it practical. More plugins mean more maintenance, so I skipped it this time. These are not final decisions.
I would try making my own environment and register it to OpenAI Gym, then combine it with one of the existing deep learning frameworks. I’m using a bit old Intel Mac, so I thought about using PlaidML + Keras to use CPU graphics for computational resources. However, I got errors when combined with OpenAI Gym (discussed in this thread), and couldn’t fix it. (I could run the PlaidML benchmark on my CPU. That was fast.) I thought my current computer would not be used for the long-term, so I decided to use just a CPU for now.
In near future, I would build a reasonable computer with a GPU and run the calculation on that. I would write another post on the hardware environment, but I’m not thinking that it is not the greatest time to write about hardware right now. At least, I should wait until the details of Apple Silicon Macs and AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series are known.
This is a relatively short post without any code. In the next post, I will probably start deciding what the world’s rules are, and register them to Open AI Gym.
