  The trade-off between accuracy and computational cost as a function of the
size and number of simulation boxes was studied for large-scale phase-field
simulations. For this purpose, a reference simulation box was incrementally
partitioned. We have considered diffusion-controlled precipitation of delta
prime in a model Al-Li system from the growth stage until early ripening. The
results of the simulations show that decomposition of simulation box can be a
valuable computational technique to accelerate simulations without substantial
loss of accuracy. In the current case study, the precipitate density was found
to be the key controlling parameter. For a pre-set accuracy, it turned out that
large-scale simulations of the reference domain can be replaced by a
combination of smaller simulations. This shortens the required simulation time
and improves the memory usage of the simulation considerably, and thus
substantially increases the efficiency of massive parallel computation for
phase-field applications.
