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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9812344,
title = {Parallelization of a Dynamic Monte Carlo Algorithm: a Partially Rejection-Free Conservative Approach},
author = {G. Korniss and M. A. Novotny and P. A. Rikvold},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9812344},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
17 pages, 7 figures, RevTex; submitted to the Journal of Computational Physics