Distributed parallel computers versus PVM on a workstation cluster in the simulation of time dependent partial differential equations

In the present paper, we present some experimental results about the parallel numerical simulation of a time dependent partial differential equation, the two dimensional nonlinear Schrodinger equation, on a message passing parallel machine and using PVM on a cluster of Sparc-stations. An implicit finite difference method has been used to carry out the simulation. Some features about the different scaling models are explained. In spite of the fact that it is difficult to compare the two parallel computing environments, we give some results of the two implementations. We reach the conclusion that PVM on a workstation cluster is a good solution to solve large-scale problems