Parallel computation and the basis system

Journal Article · Sat May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1993 · Bulletin of the American Physical Society

OSTI ID:272795

Smith, G R ^[1]

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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--
• Journal Information: Bulletin of the American Physical Society, Journal Name: Bulletin of the American Physical Society Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 38; ISSN BAPSA6; ISSN 0003-0503
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
COMPUTER CALCULATIONS
P CODES
PARALLEL PROCESSING