A Parallel Architecture for Interactive FEM Computations in a Surgery Simulator

For a laparoscopic surgery simulator, large deformations of soft tissue are computed in real time using the explicit Finite Element Method (FEM). Stability issues impose 100 s time steps. The required performance of several GFLOPS can only be achieved with a parallel computer. This paper describes tools and methods for partitioning and scheduling as well as the design of parallel hardware and algorithms. Emphasis is put on a communication concept that provides the necessary low latency and high bandwidth