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, 2000, 2001, 2002 by  the  Massachusetts
       Institute of Technology.

SEE ALSO

       mpb(1), mpb-data(1)