  We study a class of 2D non-equilibrium Ising models based on competing
dynamics induced by contact with heat-baths at two different temperatures. We
make a comparative study of the non-equilibrium versions of Metropolis, heat
bath/Glauber and Swendsen-Wang dynamics and focus on their critical behavior in
order to understand their universality classes. We present strong evidence that
some of these dynamics have the same critical exponents and belong to the same
universality class as the equilibrium 2D Ising model. We show that the bond
version of the Swendsen-Wang update algorithm can be mapped into an equilibrium
model at an effective temperature.
