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Monte Carlo simulations of settlement dynamics in GPUs

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Abstract

Recently, a Monte Carlo model was proposed in order to simulate settlement dynamics in drylands, including several environmental factors, and it was implemented as a serial CPU code. In this work we present a parallel implementation of that code using graphics processing units (GPU) and NVIDIA CUDA. The code was tested with two experiments, a Baseline case and a Realistic case. We take advantage of the GPU architecture to obtain significant speedups: \(\sim \)8\(\times \) to \(\sim \)20\(\times \) with the Baseline case in a NVIDIA Tesla C2050 versus a Phenom 1055T CPU. The Realistic case obtained \(\sim \)80\(\times \) of speedup in the same hardware. The GPU performance of the code will allow the inclusion of additional factors affecting settlements and large grid sizes for detailed environmental degradation models.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge support from CONICET, ANPCyT grants (PICT-PRH-0092 and PICT-PRH 2703), and a SeCTyP UNCuyo grant. This work used the Mendieta Cluster from CCAD-UNC, that is part of SNCAD MinCyT, Argentina. We thank the anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions which helped to improve the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Emmanuel N. Millán.

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Millán, E.N., Goirán, S.B., Piccoli, M.F. et al. Monte Carlo simulations of settlement dynamics in GPUs. Cluster Comput 19, 557–566 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-015-0501-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-015-0501-5

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