Global Sensitivity Analysis of a Large Agent-Based Model of Spatial Opinion Exchange: A Heterogeneous Multi-GPU Acceleration Approach.

Sensitivity analysis is an important step in agent-based modeling of complex adaptive spatial systems to evaluate the contribution of influential variables to model response. Sensitivity analysis of agent-based models is computationally demanding, however, and this analysis tends to be intractable f...

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Publicado en:Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 104; no. 3; pp. 485 - 510
Autores principales: Tang, Wenwu, Jia, Meijuan
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd May2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: May2014
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      pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd
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        10.1080/00045608.2014.892342
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        atl: Global Sensitivity Analysis of a Large Agent-Based Model of Spatial Opinion Exchange: A Heterogeneous Multi-GPU Acceleration Approach.
      aug:
        au:
          Tang, Wenwu
          Jia, Meijuan
        affil: Department of Geography and Earth Sciences and Center for Applied GIScience, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
      su:
        Sensitivity analysis
        Multiagent systems
        Graphics processing units
        Monte Carlo method
        Parallel computers
      sug:
        subj:
          Sensitivity analysis
          Multiagent systems
          Graphics processing units
          Monte Carlo method
          Parallel computers
      keyword:
        graphics processing units
        large agent-based models
        parallel computing
        sensitivity analysis
        spatial opinion exchange
        graphics processing units
        large agent-based models
        parallel computing
        sensitivity analysis
        spatial opinion exchange
      ab: Sensitivity analysis is an important step in agent-based modeling of complex adaptive spatial systems to evaluate the contribution of influential variables to model response. Sensitivity analysis of agent-based models is computationally demanding, however, and this analysis tends to be intractable for large agent-based modeling. This computational challenge greatly limits our ability to investigate complex spatial dynamics using large agent-based models. The objective of this study is to gain insight into this computational issue by focusing on the sensitivity analysis of large agent-based modeling of spatial opinion exchange, accelerated using multiple graphics processing units (GPUs). We present a heterogeneous parallel computing approach based on nested parallelism for the global sensitivity analysis of the model. The agent-based opinion model is parallelized using many-core GPUs for the simulation of a large number of spatially aware and interacting agents. These agents exchange opinions for developing consensus on topics through processes of spatial neighborhood search and opinion update. Global sensitivity analysis of the opinion model is conducted using a variance-based approach, requiring numerous model runs for Monte Carlo integration. Intermodel parallelization is introduced to enable Monte Carlo runs of sensitivity analysis. We conduct global sensitivity analysis on a multi-GPU cluster. Experimental results indicate GPU-accelerated general-purpose computation provides an efficacious and feasible solution for the sensitivity analysis of large agent-based models. The heterogeneous parallel computing approach provides valuable insight into large-scale spatiotemporal problem solving by leveraging cyberinfrastructure-enabled computational capabilities.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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