Units

What is a Unit?

The ao Computer is composed of three Unit types, each type contians a set of responsibilities for the computer. And each Unit is horizontally scalable.

In ao we have the Messager Unit or MU, and the Scheduler Unit or SU, and the Compute Unit or the CU. These units are the building blocks of the ao Computer Grid. There can be 1 or more of these units on the network and they work together to power the ao Operating System or aos.

• Messager Unit - This unit is the front door to ao, it receives all the messages from the outside and as well as directs traffic flow for Processes. This traffic flow we call pushing. Each process can return an Outbox when it evaluates a Message, and this Outbox can be filled with Messages or requests to Spawn new processes, and the Messenger Unit is responsible for extracting these Messages from the Outbox and signing them and sending them to the Scheduler Units for processing.

• Scheduler Unit - The Scheduler unit is responsible for ordering the messages, and storing those messages on Arweave. It is important that every message is appropriately ordered so that the evaluation can be replayed and verified. The Scheduler Unit is responsible for this process. It provides the abilty to query it via an endpoint to get the order of messages for evaluation.

• Compute Unit - The Compute unit is responsible for compute, this unit loads the binary module and manages the memory of that module, so that the execution of the process is alway running on the most up to date memory. The compute unit provides the results of the evaluation back to the the messenger unit, which can then push any messages in the outbox of the given process.

Summary

The ao Computer consists of three scalable unit types—Messager Unit (MU), Scheduler Unit (SU), and Compute Unit (CU)—which form the foundation of the ao Computer. These units can exist in multiples on the network and collectively operate the ao Operating System (aos).

The MU acts as the entry point, receiving external messages and managing process communications. It processes outgoing messages and spawn requests from process outboxes and forwards them to the SU.

The SU ensures messages are properly sequenced and stored on Arweave, maintaining order for consistent replay and verification of message evaluations.

The CU handles computation, loading binary modules, and managing memory to ensure processes run with current data. It then returns the evaluation results to the MU for further message handling.