An algorithm for parallel unstructured mesh generation and flow analysis

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-119).by Tolulope O. Okusanya.M.S

Cluster Computing Review

In the past decade there has been a dramatic shift from mainframe or ‘host−centric’ computing to a distributed ‘client−server’ approach. In the next few years this trend is likely to continue with further shifts towards ‘network−centric’ computing becoming apparent. All these trends were set in motion by the invention of the mass−reproducible microprocessor by Ted Hoff of Intel some twenty−odd years ago. The present generation of RISC microprocessors are now more than a match for mainframes in terms of cost and performance. The long−foreseen day when collections of RISC microprocessors assembled together as a parallel computer could out perform the vector supercomputers has finally arrived. Such high−performance parallel computers incorporate proprietary interconnection networks allowing low−latency, high bandwidth inter−processor communications. However, for certain types of applications such interconnect optimization is unnecessary and conventional LAN technology is sufficient. This has led to the realization that clusters of high−performance workstations can be realistically used for a variety of applications either to replace mainframes, vector supercomputers and parallel computers or to better manage already installed collections of workstations. Whilst it is clear that ‘cluster computers’ have limitations, many institutions and companies are exploring this option. Software to manage such clusters is at an early stage of development and this report reviews the current state−of−the−art. Cluster computing is a rapidly maturing technology that seems certain to play an important part in the ‘network−centric’ computing future

Ein Modell zur effizienten Parallelisierung von Algorithmen auf komplexen, dynamischen Datenstrukturen

Moderne berechnungsintensive Algorithmen, beispielsweise adaptive numerische Lösungsverfahren für partielle Differentialgleichungen, arbeiten oftmals auf komplexen, dynamischen Datenstrukturen. Die Implementierung solcher Algorithmen auf Parallelrechnern mit verteiltem Speicher mittels Datenpartitionierung wirft zahlreiche Probleme auf (z.B. Lastverteilung). Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde das neue parallele Programmiermodell Dynamic Distributed Data (DDD) entwickelt, durch das die Parallelisierungsarbeit vom Design der verteilten Datenstrukturen bis hin zur Erstellung des portablen, parallelen und effizienten Programmcodes unterstützt wird. Dem DDD-Konzept liegt ein graphbasiertes formales Modell zugrunde. Dabei wird die Datenstruktur des jeweiligen Programms (z.B. unstrukturierte Gitter) formal auf einen verteilten Graphen abgebildet, der aus mehreren lokalen Graphen besteht. Das formale Modell dient als Spezifikation des Programmiermodells und gleichzeitig zur Definition der wichtigen in dieser Arbeit verwendeten Begriffe. Der Systemarchitektur von DDD-basierten Anwendungen liegt ein Schichtenmodell zugrunde, den Kern stellt dabei die DDD-Programmbibliothek dar. Diese bietet Funktionen zur dynamischen Definition verteilter Datentypen und zur Verwaltung lokaler Objekte. In den Überlappungsbereichen der lokalen Graphen stehen abstrakte Kommunikationsfunktionen in Form von sog. Interfaces zur Verfügung. Die wesentliche Neuerung gegenüber nahezu allen bestehenden Arbeiten ist jedoch die Möglichkeit zur dynamischen Veränderung des verteilten Graphen; dies ermöglicht es beispielsweise, dynamische Lastverteilung oder Gittergenerierungsverfahren einfach und effizient zu implementieren. Damit können beliebig komplexe Datentopologien dynamisch erzeugt, migriert und wieder entfernt werden

Strategies and tools for the exploitation of massively parallel computer systems

The aim of this thesis is to develop software and strategies for the exploitation of parallel computer hardware, in particular distributed memory systems, and embedding these strategies within a parallelisation tool to allow the automatic generation of these strategies. The parallelisation of four structured mesh codes using the Computer Aided Parallelisation Tools provided a good initial parallelisation of the codes. However, investigation revealed that simple optimisation of the communications within these codes provided an even better improvement in performance. The dominant factor within the communications was the data transfer time with communication start-up latencies also significant. This was significant throughout the codes but especially in sections of pipelined code where there were large amounts of communication present. This thesis describes the development and testing of the methods used to increase the performance of these communications by overlapping them with unrelated calculation. This method of overlapping the communications was applied to the exchange of data communications as well as the pipelined communications. The successful application by hand provided the motivation for these methods to be incorporated and automatically generated within the Computer Aided Parallelisation Tools. These methods were integrated within these tools as an additional stage of the parallelisation. This required a generic algorithm that made use of many of the symbolic algebra tests and symbolic variable manipulation routines within the tools. The automatic generation of overlapped communications was applied to the four codes previously parallelised as well as a further three codes, one of which was a real world Computational Fluid Dynamics code. The methods to apply automatic generation of overlapped communications to unstructured mesh codes were also discussed. These methods are similar to those applied to the structured mesh codes and their automation is viewed to be of a similar fashion

Distributed Simulation of High-Level Algebraic Petri Nets

In the field of Petri nets, simulation is an essential tool to validate and evaluate models. Conventional simulation techniques, designed for their use in sequential computers, are too slow if the system to simulate is large or complex. The aim of this work is to search for techniques to accelerate simulations exploiting the parallelism available in current, commercial multicomputers, and to use these techniques to study a class of Petri nets called high-level algebraic nets. These nets exploit the rich theory of algebraic specifications for high-level Petri nets: Petri nets gain a great deal of modelling power by representing dynamically changing items as structured tokens whereas algebraic specifications turned out to be an adequate and flexible instrument for handling structured items. In this work we focus on ECATNets (Extended Concurrent Algebraic Term Nets) whose most distinctive feature is their semantics which is defined in terms of rewriting logic. Nevertheless, ECATNets have two drawbacks: the occultation of the aspect of time and a bad exploitation of the parallelism inherent in the models. Three distributed simulation techniques have been considered: asynchronous conservative, asynchronous optimistic and synchronous. These algorithms have been implemented in a multicomputer environment: a network of workstations. The influence that factors such as the characteristics of the simulated models, the organisation of the simulators and the characteristics of the target multicomputer have in the performance of the simulations have been measured and characterised. It is concluded that synchronous distributed simulation techniques are not suitable for the considered kind of models, although they may provide good performance in other environments. Conservative and optimistic distributed simulation techniques perform well, specially if the model to simulate is complex or large - precisely the worst case for traditional, sequential simulators. This way, studies previously considered as unrealisable, due to their exceedingly high computational cost, can be performed in reasonable times. Additionally, the spectrum of possibilities of using multicomputers can be broadened to execute more than numeric applications

Distributed parallel processing and the factoring problem

This research is concerned with distributed parallel processing and how a computer cluster/network may be used to solve large and computationally expensive problems, specifically in the area of cryptography and the problem of factoring very large numbers. Until recently few methods or systems were capable of harnessing the full potential power of a distributed environment. In order to realise the full potential of computer clusters, specially designed distributed parallel processing systems are needed. Cryptography is the science of secure communications and has recently become commercially important and widely used. This research focuses on public key cryptography, the security of which is based on the difficulty of factoring extremely large numbers. The research described in this thesis covers parallelism and distributed computing and describes an implementation of a distributed processing system. An introduction to cryptography is presented, followed by a discussion on factoring which centres on describing and implementing a distributed parallel version of Lenstra’s Elliptic Curve factoring method