Implementation of an Agent-Based Parallel Tissue Modelling Framework for the Intel MIC Architecture

Timothy is a novel large scale modelling framework that allows simulating of biological processes involving different cellular colonies growing and interacting with variable environment. Timothy was designed for execution on massively parallel High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. The high parallel scalability of the implementation allows for simulations of up to 109 individual cells (i.e., simulations at tissue spatial scales of up to 1 cm3 in size). With the recent advancements of the Timothy model, it has become critical to ensure appropriate performance level on emerging HPC architectures. For instance, the introduction of blood vessels supplying nutrients to the tissue is a very important step towards realistic simulations of complex biological processes, but it greatly increased the computational complexity of the model. In this paper, we describe the process of modernization of the application in order to achieve high computational performance on HPC hybrid systems based on modern Intel® MIC architecture. Experimental results on the Intel Xeon Phi™ coprocessor x100 and the Intel Xeon Phi processor x200 are presented.