Toward Parallel Mathematical Software for Elliptic Partial Differential Equations

Ribbens, Calvin J. and Watson, Layne T. and DeSa, Colin (1991) Toward Parallel Mathematical Software for Elliptic Partial Differential Equations. Technical Report TR-91-32, Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Abstract

Three approaches to parallelizing important components of the mathematical software package ELLPACK are considered: an explicit approach using compiler directives available only on the target machine, an automatic approach using an optimizing and parallelizing precompiler, and a two-level approach based on extensive use of a set of low level computational kernels. The focus is on shared memory architectures. Each approach to parallelization is described in detail, along with a discussion of the effort involved. Performance on a test problem, using up to sixteen processors of a Sequent Symmetry S81, is reported and discussed. Implications for the parallelization of a broad class of mathematical software are drawn.