NASA NTRS2004
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) calculations require a great deal of computing power for completing the detailed computations involved. In an effort shorten the time it takes to complete such calculations they are implemented on a parallel computer. In the case of a parallel computer some sort of message passing structure must be used to communicate between the computers because, unlike a single machine, each computer in a parallel computing cluster does not have access to all the data or run all the parts of the total program. Thus, message passing is used to divide up the data and send instructions to each machine. The nature of my work this summer involves programming the "message passing" aspect of the parallel computer. I am working on modifying an existing program, which was written with OpenMP, and does not use a multi-machine parallel computing structure, to work with Message Passing Interface (MPI) routines. The actual code is being written in the FORTRAN 90 programming language. My goal is to write a parameterized message passing structure that could be used for a variety of individual applications and implement it on Silicon Graphics Incorporated s (SGI) IRIX operating system. With this new parameterized structure engineers would be able to speed up computations for a wide variety of purposes without having to use larger and more expensive computing equipment from another division or another NASA center.