C-Linda implementations of the distinct element model

We discuss C-Linda implementations of a distinct element method used to model geomechanical phenomena. In our implementations, we adopted the master-worker agenda paradigm for parallelization. This paradigm was implemented by using two distinct approaches. These approaches are called distribution by partitions and distribution by blocks. In order to ensure that the master and worker processes are properly synchronized, we proposed two novel synchronization schemes for the distribution by blocks implementation. We provide an evaluation of these implementation techniques, as well as the synchronization schemes. This discussion is based on the experimental results obtained on an Encore Multimax machine with 6 processors