Abstract
Although molecular-dynamics simulations can be parallelized effectively to treat large systems (–10 atoms), to date the power of parallel computers has not been harnessed to make analogous gains in time scale. I present a simple approach for infrequent-event systems that extends the time scale with high parallel efficiency. Integrating a replica of the system independently on each processor until the first transition occurs gives the correct transition-time distribution, and hence the correct dynamics. I obtain 90% efficiency simulating Cu(100) surface vacancy diffusion on 15 processors.
- Received 8 January 1998
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.57.R13985
©1998 American Physical Society