def _distributeCells(numCellsPop):
    """ distribute cells across compute nodes using round-robin"""
    from .. import sim
    hostCells = {}
    for i in range(sim.nhosts):
        hostCells[i] = []
    for i in range(numCellsPop):
        hostCells[sim.nextHost].append(i)
        sim.nextHost += 1
        if sim.nextHost >= sim.nhosts:
            sim.nextHost = 0
    if sim.cfg.verbose:
        print(
            'Distributed population of %i cells on %s hosts: %s, next: %s' %
            (numCellsPop, sim.nhosts, hostCells, sim.nextHost))
    return hostCells
