Irregular buffer-zone partitioning reducing synchronization cost in SAMR

Achieving good scalability for large simulations based on structured adaptive mesh refinement is non-trivial. Performance is limited by the partitioner´s ability to efficiently use the underlying parallel computer´s resources. Domain-based partitioners serve as a foundation for techniques designed to improve the scalability and they have traditionally been designed on the basis of an independence assumption regarding the computational flow among grid patches at different refinement levels. But this assumption does not hold in practice. Hence the effectiveness of these techniques is significantly impaired. This paper introduces a partitioning method designed on the true premises. The method is tested for four different applications exhibiting different behaviors. The results show that synchronization costs on average can be reduced by 75 percent. The conclusion is that the method is suitable as a foundation in general hierarchical methods designed to improve the scalability of structured adaptive mesh refinement applications.