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Title: Parallel computation and the basis system

Journal Article · · Bulletin of the American Physical Society
OSTI ID:272795
 [1]
  1. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA (United States)

A software package has been written that can facilitate efforts to develop powerful, flexible, and easy-to use programs that can run in single-processor, massively parallel, and distributed computing environments. Particular attention has been given to the difficulties posed by a program consisting of many science packages that represent subsystems of a complicated, coupled system. Methods have been found to maintain independence of the packages by hiding data structures without increasing the communications costs in a parallel computing environment. Concepts developed in this work are demonstrated by a prototype program that uses library routines from two existing software systems, Basis and Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM). Most of the details of these libraries have been encapsulated in routines and macros that could be rewritten for alternative libraries that possess certain minimum capabilities. The prototype software uses a flexible master-and-slaves paradigm for parallel computation and supports domain decomposition with message passing for partitioning work among slaves. Facilities are provided for accessing variables that are distributed among the memories of slaves assigned to subdomains. The software is named PROTOPAR.

DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
272795
Report Number(s):
CONF-930557-; ISSN 0003-0503; TRN: 96:002196-0004
Journal Information:
Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Vol. 38, Issue 5; Conference: Conference on physics computing, Albuquerque, NM (United States), 31 May - 4 Jun 1993; Other Information: PBD: May 1993
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English