The practicality of SIMD for scientific computing

Author

Fischer, James R. ; Harnet, L.E. ; Mobarry, Clark M. ; Pedelty, Jeffrey A. ; Cohen, J.S. ; De Fainchtein, Rosalinda K. ; Fryxell, Bruce A. ; MacNeice, Peter J. ; Olson, Kevin M. ; Sterling, Thomas L.

Author_Institution

High Performance Comput. Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

fYear

1995

fDate

6-9 Feb 1995

Firstpage

258

Lastpage

264

Abstract

While not popular at present for scientific computing, SIMD has proven to be a practical option for tackling a variety of scientific problems. The MasPar MP-2 at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center is being successfully employed for Grand Challenges in Earth and space science. This paper considers the applicability, specific implementation and performance of five algorithms-astrophysical fluid dynamics, particle-in-cell techniques, N-body simulations, finite element simulations of fluids, and image processing. When compared to a single-processor CRAY C90, the MasPar MP-2 exhibits substantially better performance-to-cost and fully competitive sustained performance

Keywords

N-body problems; astrophysical fluid dynamics; finite element analysis; parallel architectures; physics computing; CRAY C90; MasPar MP-2; N-body simulations; SIMD; astrophysical fluid dynamics; finite element simulations; image processing; particle-in-cell techniques; scientific computing; Communication networks; Computational modeling; Computer architecture; Finite element methods; Geoscience; High performance computing; Image processing; Registers; Scientific computing; Streaming media;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frontiers of Massively Parallel Computation, 1995. Proceedings. Frontiers '95., Fifth Symposium on the

Conference_Location

McLean, VA

Print_ISBN

0-8186-6965-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FMPC.1995.380441

Filename

380441