Suppressing Roughness of Virtual Times in Parallel Discrete-Event Simulations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how introducing weak random interactions among processing elements in parallel discrete-event simulations can suppress the divergence of virtual time spread, leading to more efficient and synchronized simulation progress.

Contribution

It demonstrates that weak random interactions prevent divergence of virtual times in PDES, enabling near-uniform progress without global synchronization.

Findings

Weak random interactions make the virtual time spread nondivergent.

PEs progress at a near-uniform rate without global synchronization.

The approach improves efficiency in parallel discrete-event simulations.

Abstract

In a parallel discrete-event simulation (PDES) scheme, tasks are distributed among processing elements (PEs), whose progress is controlled by a synchronization scheme. For lattice systems with short-range interactions, the progress of the conservative PDES scheme is governed by the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation from the theory of non-equilibrium surface growth. Although the simulated (virtual) times of the PEs progress at a nonzero rate, their standard deviation (spread) diverges with the number of PEs, hindering efficient data collection. We show that weak random interactions among the PEs can make this spread nondivergent. The PEs then progress at a nonzero, near-uniform rate without requiring global synchronizations.