Question

In C++, I’ve written a mathematical program (for diffusion limited aggregation) where each new point calculated is dependent on all of the preceding points.
Is it possible to have such a program work in a parallel or distributed manner to increase computing speed?
If so, what type of modifications to the code would I need to look into?

EDIT: My source code is available at…
http://www.bitbucket.org/damigu78/brownian-motion/downloads/
filename is DLA_full3D.cpp
I don’t mind significant re-writes if that’s what it would take. After all, I want to learn how to do it.

Answer 1

If your algorithm is fundamentally sequential, you can’t make it fundamentally not that.

What is the algorithm you are using?

EDIT: Googling “diffusion limited aggregation algorithm parallel” lead me here, with the following quote:

DLA, on the other hand, has been shown
[9,10] to belong to the class of
inherently sequential or, more
formally, P-complete problems.
Therefore, it is unlikely that DLA
clusters can be sampled in parallel in
polylog time when restricted to a
number of processors polynomial in the
system size.

So the answer to your question is “all signs point to no”.