Parallel Software Abstractions for Structured Adaptive Mesh Methods

✍ Scribed by Scott R. Kohn; Scott B. Baden

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 415 KB
• Volume: 61
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0743-7315
• DOI: 10.1006/jpdc.2001.1700

✦ Synopsis

We describe and analyze parallelization techniques for the implementation of portable structured adaptive mesh applications on distributed memory parallel computers. Such methods are difficult to implement on parallel computers because they employ elaborate dynamic data structures to selectively capture localized irregular phenomena. Our infrastructure supports a set of layered abstractions that encapsulate low-level details of resource management, such as grid generation, interprocessor communication, and load balancing. Our layered design also provides the flexibility necessary to accommodate new applications and to fine-tune performance. This flexibility has enabled us to show that the uniformity restrictions imposed by a data parallel Fortran implementation (e.g., HPF) would significantly impact performance of structured adaptive mesh methods. We present computational results from eigenvalue computation arising in materials design.

2001