To make good use of MIMD distributed-memory machines like hypercubes, one should employ domain decomposition. Thus, for a lattice calculation, the N sites are distributed among the processors using a decomposition that ensures that processors assigned to adjacent subdomains are directly linked by a communication channel in the hypercube topology. Each processor then independently works through its subdomain of sites, updating each one in turn, and only communicating with neighboring processors when doing boundary sites.
Load balancing is achieved with equal-size domains.
Typically, such calculations have efficiencies in the range , which means they are ideally suited to this type of computation since doubling the number of processors nearly halves the total computational time required for solution. QCD provides an explanation of why quarks are confined inside hadrons, since lattice calculations reveal that the inter-quark potential rises linearly as the separation between the quarks increases. Thus, the quark potential V is written as where R is the separation of the quarks, is the coefficient of the Coulombic potential and is the string tension. In fitting experimental charmonium data to this Coulomb plus linear potential, Eichten et al. Thus, a goal of the lattice calculations is to reproduce these numbers.