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Multithreaded event-chain Monte Carlo with local times

Computational Physics 2022-08-31 v1 Soft Condensed Matter

Abstract

We present a multithreaded event-chain Monte Carlo algorithm (ECMC) for hard spheres. Threads synchronize at infrequent breakpoints and otherwise scan for local horizon violations. Using a mapping onto absorbing Markov chains, we rigorously prove the correctness of a sequential-consistency implementation for small test suites. On x86 and ARM processors, a C++ (OpenMP) implementation that uses compare-and-swap primitives for data access achieves considerable speed-up with respect to single-threaded code. The generalized birthday problem suggests that for the number of threads scaling as the square root of the number of spheres, the horizon-violation probability remains small for a fixed simulation time. We provide C++ and Python open-source code that reproduces all our results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.11040,
  title  = {Multithreaded event-chain Monte Carlo with local times},
  author = {Botao Li and Synge Todo and A. C. Maggs and Werner Krauth},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.11040},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

24 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:02:51.228Z