Scalability Study of Parallel Spatial Direct Numerical Simulation Code on IBM SPI Parallel Supercomputer.

Abstract

The implementation and the performance of a parallel spatial direct numerical simulation (PSDNS) code are reported for the IBM SP1 supercomputer. The spatially evolving disturbances that are associated with laminar-to-turbulent in three-dimensional boundary-layer flows are computed with the PS-DNS code. By remapping the distributed data structure during the course of the calculation, optimized serial library routines can be utilized that substantially increase the computational performance. Although the remapping incurs a high communication penalty, the parallel efficiency of the code remains above 40 percent for all performed calculations. By using appropriate compile options and optimized library routines, the serial code achieves 52-56 Mflops on a single node of the SPi (45 percent of theoretical peak performance). The actual performance of the PSDNS code on the SP1 is evaluated with a "real world" simulation that consists of 1.7 million grid points. One time step of this simulation is calculated on eight nodes of the SP1 in the same time as required by a Cray Y/MP for the same simulation. The scalability information provides estimated computational costs that match the actual costs relative to changes in the number of grid points.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1994
Accession Number
ADA289919

Entities

People

  • Mohammad Zubair
  • Ronald D. Joslin
  • Ulf R. Hanebutte

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundaries
  • Boundary Layer
  • Boundary Layer Flow
  • Communication Networks
  • Computations
  • Computers
  • Efficiency
  • Flow
  • High Performance Computing
  • Parallel Computing
  • Parallel Processing
  • Research Facilities
  • Scalability
  • Simulations
  • Supercomputers
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.