Particle simulation on heterogeneous distributed supercomputers

The authors describe the implementation and performance of a three dimensional particle simulation distributed between a Thinking Machines CM-2 and a Cray Y-MP. These are connected by a combination of two high-speed networks; a high performance parallel interface (HIPPI) and an optical network (Ultra Net). This is the first application to use this configuration at NASA Ames Research Center. The authors describe their experience implementing and using the application and report the results of several timing measurements. They show that the distribution of applications across disparate supercomputing platforms is feasible and has reasonable performance. In addition, several practical aspects of the computing environment are discussed