High performance computing and computational aerodynamics in the UK (original) (raw)

Impact of computers on aerodynamics research and development

Proceedings of the IEEE, 2000

Factors motivating the development of computational aerodynamics as a discipline are traced back to the limitations of the tools available to the aerodynamicist before the development of digital computers. Governing equations in exact and approximate forms are discussed together with approaches to their numerical solution. Example results obtained from the successively refined forms of the equations are presented and discussed, both in the context of levels of computerpower required and the degree of the effect that their solution has on aerodynamic research and develop ment., Factors pacing advances in computational aerodynamics are identified, including the amount of computational power required to take the next major step in the discipline. Finally, the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) Program-with its 7987 target of achieving a sustained computational rate of 7 billion floating-point operations per second operating on a memory of 240 million words-is briefly discussed in terms of its projected effect on the future of computational aerodynamics.

Solving Navier- Stokes Equations On a Massively Parallel Processor: Beyond the 1 Gflop Performance

International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 1990

This paper reports on our experience in solving large scale fluid dynamics problems on the Connection Machine model CM_2. We have implemented a parallel version of the MacCormack scheme for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations. By using triad floating point operations and reducing the number of interprocessor communications, we have achieved a sustained performance rate of 1.42 GFLOPS.

Vortex Methods for Massively Parallel Computer Architectures

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008

We present Vortex Methods implemented in massively parallel computer architectures for the Direct Numerical Simulations of high Reynolds numbers flows. Periodic and non-periodic domains are considered leading to unprecedented simulations using billions of particles. We discuss the implementation performance of the method up to 16k IBM BG/L nodes and the evolutionary optimization of long wavelength instabilities in aircraft wakes.

Parallelization of a three-dimensional flow solver for Euler rotorcraft aerodynamics predictions

AIAA Journal, 1996

An approach for parallelizing the three-dimensional Euler/Navier-Stokes rotorcraft computational fluid dynamics flow solver transonic unsteady rotor Navier-Stokes (TURNS) is introduced. Parallelization is performed using a domain decomposition technique that is developed for distributed-memory parallel architectures. Communication between the subdomains on each processor is performed via message passing in the form of message passing interface subroutine calls. The most difficult portion of the TURNS algorithm to implement efficiently in parallel is the implicit time step using the lower-upper symmetric Gauss-Seidel (LU-SGS) algorithm. Two modifications of LU-SGS are proposed to improve the parallel performance. First, a previously introduced Jacobi-like method called data-parallel lower upper relaxation (DP-LUR) is used. Second, a new hybrid method is introduced that combines the Jacobi sweeping approach in DP-LUR for interprocessor communications and the symmetric Gauss-Seidel algorithm in LU-SGS for on-processor computations. The parallelized TURNS code with the modified implicit operator is implemented on two distributed-memory multiprocessor, the IBM SP2 and Thinking Machines CM-5, and used to compute the three-dimensional quasisteady and unsteady flowfield of a helicopter rotor in forward flight. Good parallel speedups with a low percentage of communication are exhibited by the code. The proposed hybrid algorithm requires less CPU time than DP-LUR while maintaining comparable parallel speedups and communication costs. Execution rates found on the IBM SP2 are impressive; on 114 processors of the SP2, the solution time of both quasisteady and unsteady calculations is reduced by a factor of about 12 over a single processor of the Cray C-90.

An Evaluation of Architectural Platforms for Parallel Navier-Stokes Computations

The Journal of Supercomputing, 1997

We study the computational, communication, and scalability characteristics of a computational fluid dynamics application, which solves the time-accurate flow field of a jet using the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, on a variety of parallel architectural platforms. The platforms chosen for this study are a cluster of workstations (the LACE experimental testbed at NASA Lewis), a shared-memory multiprocessor (the CRAY Y-MP), and distributed-memory multiprocessors with different topologies (the IBM SP and the CRAY T3D). We investigate the impact of various networks connecting the cluster of workstations on the performance of the application and the overheads induced by popular message-passing libraries used for parallelization. The work also highlights the importance of matching the memory bandwidth to processor speed for good single processor performance. By studying the performance of an application on a variety of architectures, we are able to point out the strengths and weaknesses of each of the example computing platforms.

The Massively Parallel Processor for problems in fluid dynamics

Computer Physics Communications, 1985

We describe the use of the Massively Parallel Processor for certain large-scale scientific computations. Methods and performances are discussed for matrix calculations, tridiagonal and cyclic tridiagonal systems, iterative solution of discretized elliptic equations, the driven cavity problem and the shallow water equations.

Performance Studies of the Parallelization of a CFD Solver on the Origin 2000

1998

Weapon designers have typically run large-scale, computationally intensive numerical simulations for missile and projectile simulations on high-end supercomputing architectures. Recently, the comparable sustained performanceto-price ratio of scalar microprocessor-based architectures, relative to vector processors, has resulted in their purchase and utilization by the scientific community.