A parallel algorithm with improved performance of finite volume method (SIMPLE-TS)

Abstract

In this paper a parallel version of the finite volume method SIMPLE-TS for calculation of two-dimensional compressible, viscous gas flows with improved performance is presented. It is demonstrated on a problem regarded to micro gas flows, taking place in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). The reorganisation of the parallel algorithm improve the algorithm performance, when more cores are used for calculations on computational grids with relatively small number of nodes or cells. The reorganisation is two-fold: first to reduce the number of communications between the processes, and second to reorder the calculation of some variables in such a way that increases the number of calculations during the communications between the processes. The comparison of speed-up between previous and new parallel versions of SIMPLE-TS was performed on two types of clusters with regard to the communication hardware: the first uses specialised cards with low latency for the interconnections between the computers and the other uses conventional cards for the interconnections. The clusters are a part of the GRID-infrastructure of the European Research Area (ERA). © 2012 Springer-Verlag.