Evaluation of Parallel Decomposition Methods for Biomechanical Optimizations

As the complexity of musculoskeletal models continues to increase, so will the computational demands of biomechanical optimizations. For this reason, parallel biomechanical optimizations are becoming more common. Most implementations parallelize the optimizer. In this study, an alternate approach is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computer methods in biomechanics and biomedical engineering 2004-08, Vol.7 (4), p.215-225
Main Authors: Koh, Byung Il, Reinbolt, Jeffrey A., Fregly, Benjamin J., George, Alan D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Ankle Joint - physiology
Biomechanical optimization
Biomechanical Phenomena - methods
Computer Simulation
Computing Methodologies
Decomposition methods
Models, Biological
Movement - physiology
Muscle Contraction - physiology
Muscle, Skeletal - physiology
Musculoskeletal models
Numerical Analysis, Computer-Assisted
Parallel processing
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Summary:As the complexity of musculoskeletal models continues to increase, so will the computational demands of biomechanical optimizations. For this reason, parallel biomechanical optimizations are becoming more common. Most implementations parallelize the optimizer. In this study, an alternate approach is investigated that parallelizes the analysis function (i.e., a kinematic or dynamic simulation) called repeatedly by the optimizer to calculate the cost function and constraints. To evaluate this approach, a system identification problem involving a kinematic ankle joint model was solved using a gradient-based optimizer and three parallel decomposition methods: gradient calculation decomposition, analysis function decomposition, or both methods combined. For a given number of processors, analysis function decomposition exhibited the best performance despite the highest communication and synchronization overhead, while gradient calculation decomposition demonstrated the worst performance due to the fact that the necessary line searches were not performed in parallel. These findings suggest that the method of parallelization most commonly used for biomechanical optimizations may not be the most efficient, depending on the optimization algorithm used. In many applications, the best computational strategy may be to focus on parallelizing the analysis function.
ISSN:1025-5842
1476-8259
DOI:10.1080/10255840412331290398