Title :
A CORBA-based development environment for wrapping and coupling legacy scientific codes
Author :
Follen, Gregory ; Kim, Chan ; Lopez, Isaac ; Sang, Janche ; Townsend, Scott
Author_Institution :
NASA Glenn Res. Center, Cleveland, OH, USA
Abstract :
Within NASA´s High Performance Computing and Communication (HPCC) program, the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) is developing a large scale, detailed simulation environment for the analysis and design of aircraft engines called the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS). The three major aspects of modeling capabilities focused in NPSS, including integration of different engine components, coupling of multiple disciplines, and engine component zooming at appropriate level of fidelity, require relatively tight coupling of different analysis codes. Most of these codes in aerodynamics and solid mechanics are written in Fortran. Refitting these legacy Fortran codes with distributed objects can increase the code reusability. We describe our experiences in building a CORBA-based development environment for programmers to easily wrap and couple legacy Fortran codes. This environment consists of a C++ wrapper library to hide the details of CORBA and an efficient remote variable scheme to facilitate data exchange between the client and the server. We also report empirical performance evaluation results and describe current applications
Keywords :
C++ language; FORTRAN; aerospace engines; aerospace simulation; client-server systems; digital simulation; distributed object management; software libraries; software reusability; C++ wrapper library; CORBA-based development environment; Fortran; High Performance Computing and Communication; NASA; Numerical Propulsion System Simulation; aerodynamics; aircraft engines; client server system; distributed objects; legacy scientific code wrapping; performance evaluation; software reusability; solid mechanics; Aircraft propulsion; Analytical models; Computational modeling; Engines; High performance computing; Large-scale systems; NASA; Numerical simulation; Performance analysis; Wrapping;
Conference_Titel :
High Performance Distributed Computing, 2001. Proceedings. 10th IEEE International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
San Francisco, CA
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-1296-8
DOI :
10.1109/HPDC.2001.945173