Parallel simulation of subsonic fluid dynamics on a cluster of workstations

Author

Skordos, Panayotis A.

Author_Institution

MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

fYear

1995

fDate

2-4 Aug 1995

Firstpage

6

Lastpage

16

Abstract

An effective approach of simulating subsonic fluid dynamics on a cluster of non-dedicated workstations is presented. The approach is applied to simulate the flow of air in wind instruments. The use of local-interaction methods and coarse-grain decompositions lead to small communication requirements. The automatic migration of processes from busy hosts to free hosts enables the use of non-dedicated workstations. Simulations of 2D flow achieve 80% parallel efficiency (speedup/processors) using 20 HP-Apollo workstations. Detailed measurements of the parallel efficiency of 2D and 9D simulations are presented, and a theoretical model of efficiency is developed and compared against the measurements. Two numerical methods of fluid dynamics are tested: explicit finite differences, and the lattice Boltzmann method

Keywords

digital simulation; flow simulation; fluid dynamics; physics computing; subsonic flow; workstations; HP-Apollo workstations; cluster of workstations; coarse-grain decompositions; explicit finite differences; lattice Boltzmann method; local-interaction methods; parallel simulation; subsonic fluid dynamics; Acoustic waves; Concurrent computing; Costs; Ethernet networks; Fluid dynamics; Instruments; Lattice Boltzmann methods; Stability; Testing; Workstations;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

High Performance Distributed Computing, 1995., Proceedings of the Fourth IEEE International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Washington, DC

ISSN

1082-8907

Print_ISBN

0-8186-7088-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HPDC.1995.518689

Filename

518689