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A study of real-time and 100 billion agents simulation using the Boids model

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Abstract

In high-performance computing of multi-agent systems, there often exists a load imbalance that slows down the calculation. In this paper, we discuss the parallelization of the Boids model for simulating a swarm intelligence. We apply the multi-level hierarchy of parallelism to the Boids model to mitigate the load-imbalance problem. To eliminate numerical errors due to parallelization, we apply pseudo-quadruple arithmetic. The parallel performance is evaluated on three major architectures, including many-core processors on an x86-based server with GPUs, and the Earth Simulator. The parallelization can decrease the negative effects of a load imbalance to almost zero in a simulation of 50 million agents. In addition, the parallelization guarantees the reproducibility of the results in a sequential execution. The strong scaling shows the potential to complete a simulation in real-time on the Earth Simulator. In addition, the weak scaling shows the ability to calculate 100 billion agents within a reasonable amount of time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama, Japan

    Yuichi Hirokawa, Noriaki Nishikawa & Toshiyuki Asano

  2. RIKEN AICS, Kobe, Japan

    Masaaki Terai

  3. Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Ishikawa, Japan

    Teruo Matsuzawa

Authors
  1. Yuichi Hirokawa
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  2. Noriaki Nishikawa
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  3. Toshiyuki Asano
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  4. Masaaki Terai
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  5. Teruo Matsuzawa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuichi Hirokawa.

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Hirokawa, Y., Nishikawa, N., Asano, T. et al. A study of real-time and 100 billion agents simulation using the Boids model. Artif Life Robotics 21, 525–530 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-016-0308-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-016-0308-3

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