Toward Petascale Simulation of Cellular Microphysiology

MCell is a Monte Carlo simulator of cell microphysiology, and the scalable variant can be used to study challenging problems of interest to the biological community. MCell can currently model a single synapse out of thousands on a single cell. Petascale technology will enable significant advances in the ability to treat larger structures involving many synapses, with correspondingly more complex behavior. However, there are significant challenges to scaling MCell across two orders of magnitude in performance: increased communication delays and uneven workload concentrations. We discuss software solutions currently under investigation that will accompany us on the path to petascale cell microphysiology.

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