Massively parallel Monte Carlo simulations of images and analytical data for Electron Microscopy

Abstract

Monte Carlo electron trajectory simulations have been adapted to run on massively parallel supercomputers. An nCUBE2 parallel supercomputer with 1024 processors has been used in these studies. The advantage of the parallel architecture is the great increase in computational speed and the fact that few changes in the standard serial Monte Carlo algorithms are required. The temporal performance of the massively parallel Monte Carlo electron trajectory simulation run on 1024 nodes has been compared with Monte Carlo codes run on other types of supercomputers (CRAY-YMP). It was found to be as much as 100 times faster than the CRAY-YMP and over 2000 times faster than a VAX 785. This increase in computational speed allows the exploration of problems, in particular those involving small probability events, which are not normally amenable to solution by traditional serial Monte Carlo simulations due tothe time intensive nature of the calculations. For example, the calculation of 1,000,000 electrons at 100 kV through a thin foil takes about 6 seconds on the nCUBE.