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At least 631 records · Page 35

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NASA NTRS1989

Parallel eigenanalysis of finite element models in a completely connected architecture

A parallel algorithm is presented for the solution of the generalized eigenproblem in linear elastic finite element analysis, (K)(phi) = (M)(phi)(omega), where (K) and (M) are of order N, and (omega) is order of q. The concurrent solution of the eigenproblem is based on the multifrontal/modified subspace method and is achieved in a completely connected parallel architecture in which each processor is allowed to communicate with all other processors. The algorithm was successfully implemented on a tightly coupled multiple-instruction multiple-data parallel processing machine, Cray X-MP. A finite element model is divided into m domains each of which is assumed to process n elements. Each domain is then assigned to a processor or to a logical processor (task) if the number of domains exceeds the number of physical processors. The macrotasking library routines are used in mapping each domain to a user task. Computational speed-up and efficiency are used to determine the effectiveness of the algorithm. The effect of the number of domains, the number of degrees-of-freedom located along the global fronts and the dimension of the subspace on the performance of the algorithm are investigated. A parallel finite element dynamic analysis program, p-feda, is documented and the performance of its subroutines in parallel environment is analyzed.

Akl, F. A.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Turbomachinery CFD on parallel computers

The role of multistage turbomachinery simulation in the development of propulsion system models is discussed. Particularly, the need for simulations with higher fidelity and faster turnaround time is highlighted. It is shown how such fast simulations can be used in engineering-oriented environments. The use of parallel processing to achieve the required turnaround times is discussed. Current work by several researchers in this area is summarized. Parallel turbomachinery CFD research at the NASA Lewis Research Center is then highlighted. These efforts are focused on implementing the average-passage turbomachinery model on MIMD, distributed memory parallel computers. Performance results are given for inviscid, single blade row and viscous, multistage applications on several parallel computers, including networked workstations.

Blech, Richard A.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Turbomachinery CFD on parallel computers

Blech, R. A.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Efficient computation of aerodynamic influence coefficients for aeroelastic analysis on a transputer network

Aeroelastic analysis is multi-disciplinary and computationally expensive. Hence, it can greatly benefit from parallel processing. As part of an effort to develop an aeroelastic capability on a distributed memory transputer network, a parallel algorithm for the computation of aerodynamic influence coefficients is implemented on a network of 32 transputers. The aerodynamic influence coefficients are calculated using a 3-D unsteady aerodynamic model and a parallel discretization. Efficiencies up to 85 percent were demonstrated using 32 processors. The effect of subtask ordering, problem size, and network topology are presented. A comparison to results on a shared memory computer indicates that higher speedup is achieved on the distributed memory system.

Janetzke, David C.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Interfacing Computer Aided Parallelization and Performance Analysis

When porting sequential applications to parallel computer architectures, the program developer will typically go through several cycles of source code optimization and performance analysis. We have started a project to develop an environment where the user can jointly navigate through program structure and performance data information in order to make efficient optimization decisions. In a prototype implementation we have interfaced the CAPO computer aided parallelization tool with the Paraver performance analysis tool. We describe both tools and their interface and give an example for how the interface helps within the program development cycle of a benchmark code.

Jost, Gabriele↗

NASA NTRS1989

Eigensolution of finite element problems in a completely connected parallel architecture

A parallel algorithm for the solution of the generalized eigenproblem in linear elastic finite element analysis, (K)(phi)=(M)(phi)(omega), where (K) and (M) are of order N, and (omega) is of order q is presented. The parallel algorithm is based on a completely connected parallel architecture in which each processor is allowed to communicate with all other processors. The algorithm has been successfully implemented on a tightly coupled multiple-instruction-multiple-data (MIMD) parallel processing computer, Cray X-MP. A finite element model is divided into m domains each of which is assumed to process n elements. Each domain is then assigned to a processor, or to a logical processor (task) if the number of domains exceeds the number of physical processors. The macro-tasking library routines are used in mapping each domain to a user task. Computational speed-up and efficiency are used to determine the effectiveness of the algorithm. The effect of the number of domains, the number of degrees-of-freedom located along the global fronts and the dimension of the subspace on the performance of the algorithm are investigated. For a 64-element rectangular plate, speed-ups of 1.86, 3.13, 3.18 and 3.61 are achieved on two, four, six and eight processors, respectively.

Akl, Fred A.↗

NASA NTRS1987

A parallel algorithm for channel routing on a hypercube

A new parallel simulated annealing algorithm for channel routing on a P processor hypercube is presented. The basic idea used is to partition a set of tracks equally among processors in the hypercube. In parallel, P/2 pairs of processors perform displacements and exchanges of nets between tracks, compute the changes in cost functions, and accept moves using a parallel annealing criteria. Through the use of a unique distributed data structure, it is possible to minimize message traffic and add versatility and efficiency in a parallel routing tool. The algorithm has been implemented and is being tested on some of the popular channel problems from the literature.

Brouwer, Randall↗

NASA NTRS1987

Report from the MPP Working Group to the NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science and Applications

NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) gave a select group of scientists the opportunity to test and implement their computational algorithms on the Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) located at Goddard Space Flight Center, beginning in late 1985. One year later, the Working Group presented its report, which addressed the following: algorithms, programming languages, architecture, programming environments, the way theory relates, and performance measured. The findings point to a number of demonstrated computational techniques for which the MPP architecture is ideally suited. For example, besides executing much faster on the MPP than on conventional computers, systolic VLSI simulation (where distances are short), lattice simulation, neural network simulation, and image problems were found to be easier to program on the MPP's architecture than on a CYBER 205 or even a VAX. The report also makes technical recommendations covering all aspects of MPP use, and recommendations concerning the future of the MPP and machines based on similar architectures, expansion of the Working Group, and study of the role of future parallel processors for space station, EOS, and the Great Observatories era.

Fischer, James R.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Comprehensive analysis of helicopters with bearingless rotors

A modified Galerkin method is developed to analyze the dynamic problems of multiple-load-path bearingless rotor blades. The development and selection of functions are quite parallel to CAMRAD procedures, greatly facilitating the implementation of the method into the CAMRAD program. A software is developed implementing the modified Galerkin method to determine free vibration characteristics of multiple-load-path rotor blades undergoing coupled flapwise bending, chordwise bending, twisting, and extensional motions. Results are in the process of being obtained by debugging the software.

Murthy, V. R.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Investigation of air transportation technology at Princeton University, 1988-1989

The Air Transportation Technology Program at Princeton University, a program emphasizing graduate and undergraduate student research, proceeded along several avenues during the past year. A study of optimal trajectories for penetration of microbursts when encounter is unavoidable was conducted. The emphasis of current wind shear research is on developing an expert system for wind shear avoidance. A knowledge-based reconfigurable flight control system that is implemented with the Pascal programming language using parallel microprocessors was developed. This expert system could be considered a prototype for a failure-tolerant control system that can be constructed using existing hardware. Development of a real-time cockpit simulator continued during the year. The simulator provides a single-person crew station with both conventional and advanced control devices; it currently is programmed to simulate the Navion single-engine general aviation airplane. Alternatives for the air traffic control system giving particular attention to the institutional structure of the FAA are analyzed. A simple numerical procedure for estimating the stochastic robustness of control systems is being investigated. The revitalization of the general aviation industry is also discussed.

Stengel, Robert F.↗

NASA NTRS1989

FFTs in external or hierarchical memory

A description is given of advanced techniques for computing an ordered FFT on a computer with external or hierarchical memory. These algorithms (1) require as few as two passes through the external data set, (2) use strictly unit stride, long vector transfers between main memory and external storage, (3) require only a modest amount of scratch space in main memory, and (4) are well suited for vector and parallel computation. Performance figures are included for implementations of some of these algorithms on Cray supercomputers. Of interest is the fact that a main memory version outperforms the current Cray library FFT routines on the Cray-2, the Cray X-MP, and the Cray Y-MP systems. Using all eight processors on the Cray Y-MP, this main memory routine runs at nearly 2 Gflops.

Bailey, David H.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Optical computing at NASA Ames Research Center

Optical computing research at NASA Ames Research Center seeks to utilize the capability of analog optical processing, involving free-space propagation between components, to produce natural implementations of algorithms requiring large degrees of parallel computation. Potential applications being investigated include robotic vision, planetary lander guidance, aircraft engine exhaust analysis, analysis of remote sensing satellite multispectral images, control of space structures, and autonomous aircraft inspection.

Reid, Max B.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Data fusion with artificial neural networks (ANN) for classification of earth surface from microwave satellite measurements

A data fusion system with artificial neural networks (ANN) is used for fast and accurate classification of five earth surface conditions and surface changes, based on seven SSMI multichannel microwave satellite measurements. The measurements include brightness temperatures at 19, 22, 37, and 85 GHz at both H and V polarizations (only V at 22 GHz). The seven channel measurements are processed through a convolution computation such that all measurements are located at same grid. Five surface classes including non-scattering surface, precipitation over land, over ocean, snow, and desert are identified from ground-truth observations. The system processes sensory data in three consecutive phases: (1) pre-processing to extract feature vectors and enhance separability among detected classes; (2) preliminary classification of Earth surface patterns using two separate and parallely acting classifiers: back-propagation neural network and binary decision tree classifiers; and (3) data fusion of results from preliminary classifiers to obtain the optimal performance in overall classification. Both the binary decision tree classifier and the fusion processing centers are implemented by neural network architectures. The fusion system configuration is a hierarchical neural network architecture, in which each functional neural net will handle different processing phases in a pipelined fashion. There is a total of around 13,500 samples for this analysis, of which 4 percent are used as the training set and 96 percent as the testing set. After training, this classification system is able to bring up the detection accuracy to 94 percent compared with 88 percent for back-propagation artificial neural networks and 80 percent for binary decision tree classifiers. The neural network data fusion classification is currently under progress to be integrated in an image processing system at NOAA and to be implemented in a prototype of a massively parallel and dynamically reconfigurable Modular Neural Ring (MNR).

Lure, Y. M. Fleming↗

NASA NTRS1993

Kinematics and control of a fully parallel force-reflecting hand controller for manipulator teleoperation

Design of a parallel force-reflecting hand controller that implements a friction- and inertia canceling control loop about the entire mechanism based on wrench sensing in the mechanism handgrip is discussed. Kinematics of the controller under consideration is analyzed and results are presented using a closed-form solution for the inverse kinematics and Newton-Raphson's method for the forward kinematics. Results indicate that the force control scheme based on a handgrip force sensor provides smaller steady-state errors than the scheme without a handigrip sensor.

Bryfogle, Mark D.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Computational requirements for on-orbit identification of space systems

For the future space systems, on-orbit identification (ID) capability will be required to complement on-orbit control, due to the fact that the dynamics of large space structures, spacecrafts, and antennas will not be known sufficiently from ground modeling and testing. The computational requirements for ID of flexible structures such as the space station (SS) or the large deployable reflectors (LDR) are however, extensive due to the large number of modes, sensors, and actuators. For these systems the ID algorithm operations need not be computed in real-time, only in near real-time, or an appropriate mission time. Consequently the space systems will need advanced processors and efficient parallel processing algorithm design and architectures to implement the identification algorithms in near real-time. The MAX computer currently being developed may handle such computational requirements. The purpose is to specify the on-board computational requirements for dynamic and static identification for large space structures. The computational requirements for six ID algorithms are presented in the context of three examples: the JPL/AFAL ground antenna facility, the space station (SS), and the large deployable reflector (LDR).

Hadaegh, Fred Y.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Calculating intersections of surfaces in screen space

When surfaces intersect, one may desire to highlight the intersection curve in order to make the shape of the penetrating surfaces more visible. Highlighting the intersection is especially helpful when the surfaces become transparent, because transparency makes the intersections less evident. A technique for locating intersections in screen space using only the information locally available to a pixel is discussed. The technique is designed to exploit parallelism at the pixel level and was implemented on the Pixel-Planes 5 graphics supercomputer.

Banks, David C.↗

NASA NTRS1993

A data distributed parallel algorithm for ray-traced volume rendering

This paper presents a divide-and-conquer ray-traced volume rendering algorithm and a parallel image compositing method, along with their implementation and performance on the Connection Machine CM-5, and networked workstations. This algorithm distributes both the data and the computations to individual processing units to achieve fast, high-quality rendering of high-resolution data. The volume data, once distributed, is left intact. The processing nodes perform local ray tracing of their subvolume concurrently. No communication between processing units is needed during this locally ray-tracing process. A subimage is generated by each processing unit and the final image is obtained by compositing subimages in the proper order, which can be determined a priori. Test results on both the CM-5 and a group of networked workstations demonstrate the practicality of our rendering algorithm and compositing method.

Ma, Kwan-Liu↗

NASA NTRS1994

Multi-partitioning for ADI-schemes on message passing architectures

A kind of discrete-operator splitting called Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) has been found to be useful in simulating fluid flow problems. In particular, it is being used to study the effects of hot exhaust jets from high performance aircraft on landing surfaces. Decomposition techniques that minimize load imbalance and message-passing frequency are described. Three strategies that are investigated for implementing the NAS Scalar Penta-diagonal Parallel Benchmark (SP) are transposition, pipelined Gaussian elimination, and multipartitioning. The multipartitioning strategy, which was used on Ethernet, was found to be the most efficient, although it was considered only a moderate success because of Ethernet's limited communication properties. The efficiency derived largely from the coarse granularity of the strategy, which reduced latencies and allowed overlap of communication and computation.

Vanderwijngaart, Rob F.↗