Implementing multidisciplinary and multi-zonal applications using MPI

Multidisciplinary and multi-zonal applications are codes where two or more distinct parallel programs or copies of a single program are utilized to model a single problem. To support such applications, a program can be divided into several single program multiple data stream (SPMD) applications, each of which solves the equations for a single physical discipline or grid zone. These applications are bound together to form a single multidisciplinary or multizonal program in which the constituent parts communicate via point-to-point message passing routines. In this report it is shown that the new Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard is a viable portable library for implementing the message passing portion of multidisciplinary applications. Further with the extension of a portable loader; fully portable multidisciplinary application programs can be developed. Finally, the performance of MPI is compared to that of some native message passing libraries. This comparison shows that MPI can be implemented to deliver performance commensurate with native message passing libraries