SIMULATING THE IMMUNE-RESPONSE ON A DISTRIBUTED PARALLEL COMPUTER

The application of ideas and methods of statistical mechanics to probl ems of biological relevance is one of the most promising frontiers of theoretical and computational mathematical physics.(1,2) Among others, the computer simulation of the immune system dynamics stands out as o ne of the prominent candidates for this type of investigations. In the recent years immunological research has been drawing increasing benef its from the resort to advanced mathematical modeling on modern comput ers.(3,4) Among others, Cellular Automata (CA), i.e., fully discrete d ynamical systems evolving according to boolean laws, appear to be extr emely well suited to computer simulation of biological systems.(5) A p rominent example of immunological CA is represented by the Celada-Seid en automaton, that has proven capable of providing several new insight s into the dynamics of the immune system response. To date, the Celada -Seiden automaton was not in a position to exploit the impressive adva nces of computer technology, and notably parallel processing, simply b ecause no parallel version of this automaton had been developed Set. I n this paper we fill this gap and describe a parallel version of the C elada-Seiden cellular automaton aimed at simulating the dynamic respon se of the immune system. Details on the parallel implementation as wel l as performance data on the IBM SP2 parallel platform are presented a nd commented on.