Practical distribution of random streams for stochastic High Performance Computing

Random number generators are necessary in every simulation which includes stochastic aspects. For High Performance Computing, there is an increasing interest in the distribution of parallel random number streams. Even if we have now at our disposal statistically sound random number generators according to very tough testing libraries, their parallelization can still be a delicate problem. A set of recent publications shows it still has to be mastered by the scientific community. In this paper, we discuss the different partitioning techniques currently in use to provide independent streams with their corresponding software. We try to give an up-to-date state of the art in the parallelization of random numbers for High Performance Computing from the point of view of a simulation practitioner.