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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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Progress in Parallel Schur Complement Preconditioning for Computational Fluid Dynamics

We consider preconditioning methods for nonself-adjoint advective-diffusive systems based on a non-overlapping Schur complement procedure for arbitrary triangulated domains. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop scalable preconditioning algorithms for fluid flow discretizations on parallel computing architectures. In our implementation of the Schur complement preconditioning technique, the triangulation is first partitioned into a number of subdomains using the METIS multi-level k-way partitioning code. This partitioning induces a natural 2X2 partitioning of the p.d.e. discretization matrix. By considering various inverse approximations of the 2X2 system, we have developed a family of robust preconditioning techniques. A computer code based on these ideas has been developed and tested on the IBM SP2 and the SGI Power Challenge array using MPI message passing protocol. A number of example CFD calculations will be presented to illustrate and assess various Schur complement approximations.

Barth, Timothy J.↗

Extending substructure based iterative solvers to multiple load and repeated analyses

Direct solvers currently dominate commercial finite element structural software, but do not scale well in the fine granularity regime targeted by emerging parallel processors. Substructure based iterative solvers--often called also domain decomposition algorithms--lend themselves better to parallel processing, but must overcome several obstacles before earning their place in general purpose structural analysis programs. One such obstacle is the solution of systems with many or repeated right hand sides. Such systems arise, for example, in multiple load static analyses and in implicit linear dynamics computations. Direct solvers are well-suited for these problems because after the system matrix has been factored, the multiple or repeated solutions can be obtained through relatively inexpensive forward and backward substitutions. On the other hand, iterative solvers in general are ill-suited for these problems because they often must restart from scratch for every different right hand side. In this paper, we present a methodology for extending the range of applications of domain decomposition methods to problems with multiple or repeated right hand sides. Basically, we formulate the overall problem as a series of minimization problems over K-orthogonal and supplementary subspaces, and tailor the preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm to solve them efficiently. The resulting solution method is scalable, whereas direct factorization schemes and forward and backward substitution algorithms are not. We illustrate the proposed methodology with the solution of static and dynamic structural problems, and highlight its potential to outperform forward and backward substitutions on parallel computers. As an example, we show that for a linear structural dynamics problem with 11640 degrees of freedom, every time-step beyond time-step 15 is solved in a single iteration and consumes 1.0 second on a 32 processor iPSC-860 system; for the same problem and the same parallel processor, a pair of forward/backward substitutions at each step consumes 15.0 seconds.

Farhat, Charbel↗

Climate Data Assimilation on a Massively Parallel Supercomputer

We have designed and implemented a set of highly efficient and highly scalable algorithms for an unstructured computational package, the PSAS data assimilation package, as demonstrated by detailed performance analysis of systematic runs on up to 512-nodes of an Intel Paragon. The preconditioned Conjugate Gradient solver achieves a sustained 18 Gflops performance. Consequently, we achieve an unprecedented 100-fold reduction in time to solution on the Intel Paragon over a single head of a Cray C90. This not only exceeds the daily performance requirement of the Data Assimilation Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, but also makes it possible to explore much larger and challenging data assimilation problems which are unthinkable on a traditional computer platform such as the Cray C90.

supercomputer↗

Fast structural design and analysis via hybrid domain decomposition on massively parallel processors

A hybrid domain decomposition framework for static, transient and eigen finite element analyses of structural mechanics problems is presented. Its basic ingredients include physical substructuring and /or automatic mesh partitioning, mapping algorithms, 'gluing' approximations for fast design modifications and evaluations, and fast direct and preconditioned iterative solvers for local and interface subproblems. The overall methodology is illustrated with the structural design of a solar viewing payload that is scheduled to fly in March 1993. This payload has been entirely designed and validated by a group of undergraduate students at the University of Colorado using the proposed hybrid domain decomposition approach on a massively parallel processor. Performance results are reported on the CRAY Y-MP/8 and the iPSC-860/64 Touchstone systems, which represent both extreme parallel architectures. The hybrid domain decomposition methodology is shown to outperform leading solution algorithms and to exhibit an excellent parallel scalability.

Farhat, Charbel↗

Effects of Ordering Strategies and Programming Paradigms on Sparse Matrix Computations

The Conjugate Gradient (CG) algorithm is perhaps the best-known iterative technique to solve sparse linear systems that are symmetric and positive definite. For systems that are ill-conditioned, it is often necessary to use a preconditioning technique. In this paper, we investigate the effects of various ordering and partitioning strategies on the performance of parallel CG and ILU(O) preconditioned CG (PCG) using different programming paradigms and architectures. Results show that for this class of applications: ordering significantly improves overall performance on both distributed and distributed shared-memory systems, that cache reuse may be more important than reducing communication, that it is possible to achieve message-passing performance using shared-memory constructs through careful data ordering and distribution, and that a hybrid MPI+OpenMP paradigm increases programming complexity with little performance gains. A implementation of CG on the Cray MTA does not require special ordering or partitioning to obtain high efficiency and scalability, giving it a distinct advantage for adaptive applications; however, it shows limited scalability for PCG due to a lack of thread level parallelism.

Oliker, Leonid↗