Simulation of nonlinear distributed parameter systems on the connection machine

The recently introduced Connection Machine, CM-2, is a multiprocessor with massive parallelism. Fully expanded, the CM-2 consists of 64K processing elements connected in a hypercube topology. Each processing element contains a single-bit arithmetic and logic unit as well as up to 256K bits of local memory. Operation is in the SIMD mode with a single control unit controlling all the processors. In this paper the application of a quarter CM-2 (16K processing elements) to the simulation of excitable media is described. Excitable media are distributed parameter systems, charac terized by nonlinear partial differential equations, containing distributed sources of energy. Excitable media arise in biological systems (e.g. heart muscles), chemical processes and a variety of other application areas. The implementation of a mathematical model for the heart muscle on the CM-2 permitted the generation of very interesting computational results.