Performance analysis of large scale parallel CFD computing based on Code_Saturne Original Research Article

In order to run computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes on large scales, parallel computing has to be employed. For instance, on Petascale computing, general parallel computing without any optimization is not enough, especially for complex industrial issues that employ a large number of mesh cells to capture the details of the geometry. How to distribute these mesh cells among the multi-processors for Terascale and Petascale systems to obtain a good performance on parallel computing is really a challenge. Some mesh partitioning software packages, such as Metis, ParMetis, PT-Scotch and Zoltan, were chosen as the candidates ported into Code_Saturne to test if they can lead Code_Saturne towards Petascale and Exascale parallel CFD computing. Through the studies, it was found that mesh partitioning optimization software packages based on the graph mesh partitioning method can help the CFD code obtain good mesh distributions for high performance computing (HPC).