Massively-Parallel Methods for Engineering and Science Problems

W. J. Camp, S. J. Plimpton, B. A. Hendrickson, R. W. Leland, Communications of the ACM, 37, 31-41 (1994).

Massively parallel computers promise unique power for engineering and scientific simulations. Development of parallel software tools and algorithms that take full advantage of this power is a continuing challenge to computational researchers. In this paper we discuss the advantages a message-- passing multiple--instruction/multiple--data (MIMD) programming approach has for parallel simulations and two domain--decomposition and load--balancing methods designed to optimize data locality and minimize communication costs on large parallel machines. The methods have proven useful for parallel computations in a broad range of technical fields including structural and fluid dynamics and chemical, biological, and materials science.

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