Computer simulation of complex, strongly coupled nanometer-scale systems: Breaking the billion atom barrier

The capabilities of polymer science and computational chemistry are reaching a point of convergence. New computer hardware and novel computational methods have created opportunities to investigate new polymeric materials, as well as to model and predict their properties. The recent arrival of massively parallel computers and new algorithms for sharing computational tasks among many processors now bring simulation sizes on the order of 109 atoms to within reasonable time limits and will allow for new studies in emerging fields such as molecular nanotechnology.