NAME

       mpb-split - compute eigenmodes with MPB using multiple processes

SYNOPSIS

       mpb-split NUM-SPLIT [DEFINITION]... [CTLFILE]...

DESCRIPTION

       mpb-split  is  a  parallelizing  front-end to MIT Photonic Bands (MPB).  For a computation with several k
       points, it splits the list of k points over multiple processes.  Of course, this will only benefit you on
       a  system  where  different  processes will run on different processors, such as an SMP or a cluster with
       automatic process migration (e.g. MOSIX). mpb-split is actually a trivial shell script,  though,  so  you
       can   easily   modify   it  if  you  need  to  use  a  special  command  to  launch  processes  on  other
       processors/machines.

       MIT Photonic Bands (MPB) is a free program to compute the  band  structures  (dispersion  relations)  and
       electromagnetic  modes  of  periodic  dielectric  structures, and is applicable both to photonic crystals
       (photonic band-gap materials) and a wide range of other optical problems.

       More information on MPB, including a detailed  manual,  can  be  found  online  at  the  MPB  home  page:
       http://ab-initio.mit.edu/mpb/

       A typical invocation of mpb-split looks like:

           mpb-split num-split foo.ctl >& foo.out

       This  causes  mpb-split  to  process  the  control file foo.ctl, divide the k points into num-split equal
       chunks, run each list in a separate process with MPB, and redirect the  output  (in  order)  to  foo.out.
       (One  typically  redirects  output  to  a  file, as the output is verbose and contains a number of comma-
       delimited datasets that one can extract by grepping.)

       Overall, the behavior and arguments are the same as for mpb except that the first argument  must  be  the
       integer num-split.

       What  mpb-split technically does is to set the MPB variable k-split-num to num-split and k-split-index to
       the index (starting with 0) of the chunk for each process. If you want, you can use  these  variables  to
       divide the problem in some other way and then reset them to 1 and 0, respectively.

BUGS

       Send bug reports to S. G. Johnson, stevenj@alum.mit.edu.

AUTHORS

       Written by Steven G. Johnson.  Copyright (c) 1999-2012 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

SEE ALSO

       mpb(1), mpb-data(1)