An events based algorithm for distributing concurrent tasks on multi-core architectures

In this paper, a programming model is presented which enables scalable parallel performance on multi-core shared memory architectures. The model has been developed for application to a wide range of numerical simulation problems. Such problems involve time stepping or iteration algorithms where synchronization of multiple threads of execution is required. It is shown that traditional approaches to parallelism including message passing and scatter-gather can be improved upon in terms of speed-up and memory management. Using spatial decomposition to create orthogonal computational tasks, a new task management algorithm called H-Dispatch is developed. This algorithm makes efficient use of memory resources by limiting the need for garbage collection and takes optimal advantage of multiple cores by employing a “hungry” pull strategy. The technique is demonstrated on a simple finite difference solver and results are compared to traditional MPI and scatter-gather approaches. The H-Dispatch approach achieves near linear speed-up with results for efficiency of 85% on a 24-core machine. It is noted that the H-Dispatch algorithm is quite general and can be applied to a wide class of computational tasks on heterogeneous architectures involving multi-core and GPGPU hardware.Schlumberger-Doll Research CenterSaudi Aramc

Finite Difference Simulations of the Navier-Stokes Equations using Parallel Distributed Computing

This paper discusses the implementation of a numerical algorithm for simulating incompressible fluid flows based on the finite difference method and designed for parallel computing platforms with distributed-memory, particularly for clusters of workstations. The solution algorithm for the Navier-Stokes equations utilizes an explicit scheme for pressure and an implicit scheme for velocities, i. e., the velocity field at a new time step can be computed once the corresponding pressure is known. The parallel implementation is based on domain decomposition, where the original calculation domain is decomposed into several blocks, each of which given to a separate processing node. All nodes then execute computations in parallel, each node on its associated sub-domain. The parallel computations include initialization, coefficient generation, linear solution on the subdomain, and inter-node communication. The exchange of information across the sub-domains, or processors, is achieved using the message passing interface standard, MPI. The use of MPI ensures portability across different computing platforms ranging from massively parallel machines to clusters of workstations. The execution time and speed-up are evaluated through comparing the performance of different numbers of processors. The results indicate that the parallel code can significantly improve prediction capability and efficiency for large-scale simulations