Speculative Parallel Asynchronous Contact Mechanics

We extend the Asynchronous Contact Mechanics algorithm [Harmon et al. 2009] and improve its performance by two orders of magnitude, using only optimizations that do not compromise ACM’s three guarantees of safety, progress, and correctness. The key to this speedup is replacing ACM’s timid, forward-looking mechanism for detecting collisions—locating and rescheduling separating plane kinetic data structures—with an optimistic speculative method inspired by Mirtich’s rigid body Time Warp algorithm [2000].