Application of a Distribute d nEtwork in Computational Fluid Dynamic Simulations

Abstract

A general-purpose 3-D, incompressible Navier-Stokes algorithm is implemented on a network of concur rently operating workstations using PVM and com pared with its performance on a CRAY Y-MP and on an Intel iPSC/860. The problem is relatively computa tionally intensive, and has a communication structure based primarily on nearest-neighbor communication, making it ideally suited to message passing. Such problems are frequently encountered in CFD, and their solution is increasingly in demand. The communica tion structure is explicitly coded in the implementation to fully exploit the regularity in message passing in order to produce a near-optimal solution. Results are presented for various grid sizes using up to eight pro cessors.