Parallel Computing Applied to the Dynamics of One-Dimensional Cellular Automata

Abstract: Parallel computing is becoming increasingly important for solving technological and scientific problems. In fact, the most powerful computers in the world are now parallel machines. In this paper we utilize a low-cost parallel computing environment, based on the UNIX operating system and the PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) and MPI (Message Passing Interface) communication protocols, to compute the dynamical evolution of one-dimensional cellular automata with large numbers of sites. Specifically, we develop and validate parallel binary PVM and MPI implementations, analyse their parallel performance measures, and use the relatively faster MPI implementation to obtain some results for cellular automata with large numbers of sites. Key-Words: Parallel computing, PVM, MPI, cellular automata, complex systems.