Cellular automata and cluster computing: An application to the simulation of laser dynamics

Abstract

Firstly, the application of a cellular automata (CA) model to simulate the dynamics of lasers is reviewed. With this kind of model, the macroscopic properties of the laser system emerge as a cooperative phenomenon from elementary components locally inter-acting under simple rules. Secondly, a parallel implementation of this kind of model for distributed-memory parallel computers is presented. Performance and scalability of this parallel implementation running on a computer cluster are analyzed, giving very satisfac-tory results. This confirms the feasibility of running large 3D simulations— unaffordable on an individual machine—on computer clusters, in order to simulate specific real laser systems.