Interfaces and Implementations of Random Number Generators for Java Grande Applications

The Java Grande Forum aims to drive improvements to the Java language and its standard libraries in order that Java may be efficiently used for large-scale scientific applications, particularly on high-performance computers. Random number generators are one of the most commonly used numerical library functions in applications of this kind. For the current random number generator provided within Java, neither the implementation nor the interfaces are adequate to meet the needs of some Java Grande applications, such as Monte Carlo simulations. We present a preliminary proposal for an API for accessing a random number generator within a Java scientific software library for supporting Java Grande applications. A reference implementation of the proposed API is described, and we discuss some implementation and performance issues. Mechanisms for efficiently handling concurrency are also discussed. 1 Introduction Java has the potential to be an excellent language for developing large science ..