arXiv · cond-mat/9812344
Parallelization of a Dynamic Monte Carlo Algorithm: a Partially Rejection-Free Conservative Approach
Abstract
We experiment with a massively parallel implementation of an algorithm for simulating the dynamics of metastable decay in kinetic Ising models. The parallel scheme is directly applicable to a wide range of stochastic cellular automata where the discrete events (updates) are Poisson arrivals. For high performance, we utilize a continuous-time, asynchronous parallel version of the n-fold way rejection-free algorithm. Each processing element carries an lxl block of spins, and we employ the fast SHMEM-library routines on the Cray T3E distributed-memory parallel architecture. Different processing elements have different local simulated times. To ensure causality, the algorithm handles the asynchrony in a conservative fashion. Despite relatively low utilization and an intricate relationship between the average time increment and the size of the spin blocks, we find that for sufficiently large l the algorithm outperforms its corresponding parallel Metropolis (non-rejection-free) counterpart. As an example application, we present results for metastable decay in a model ferromagnetic or ferroelectric film, observed with a probe of area smaller than the total system.
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G. Korniss, M. A. Novotny, P. A. Rikvold. 1998-12-21. Parallelization of a Dynamic Monte Carlo Algorithm: a Partially Rejection-Free Conservative Approach. https://doi.org/10.1006/jcph.1999.6291
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