Discrete event cellular automata: A new approach to cellular automata for computational material science

Abstract

We explore the computational advantages of discrete event simulation for cellular automata models of grain growth. These benefits include a reduction in execution time by up to an order of magnitude and the elimination of numerical errors that stem from overshooting grain capture events and approximating a Poisson process with a Bernoulli process. The fundamental mechanisms speeding up the discrete event simulation are uncovered, and with these we create a speedup model that explains our experimental outcomes.