Large-Scale Simulations of Complex Systems, Part I: Conceptual Framework

In this working document, we report on a new approach to high-performance simulation. The main inspiration to this approach is the concept of complex systems: disparate elements with well-defined interactions rules and non-nonlinear emergent macroscopic behavior. We provide arguments and mechanisms to abstract temporal and spatial locality from the application and to incorporate this locality into the complete design cycle of modeling and simulation on parallel architectures. Although the main application area discussed here is physics, the presented Virtual Particle (VIP) paradigm in the context of Dynamic Complex Systems (DCS), is applicable to other areas of compute-intensive applications. Part I deals with the concepts behind VIP and DCS models. A formal approach to the mapping of application task graphs to machine task graphs is presented. The major part of section 3 has recently (July 1997) been accepted for publication in Complexity. In Part II we will elaborate on the execution behavior of a series of large-scale simulations using the concepts presented in this document. Note that this is a working document, where we present ongoing work on a formal description of DCS and compile new ideas and results of our research group.