Improving the communication network of a cluster of PC´s to solve implicit CFD problems

In this work we investigate the feasibility of using a cluster of PCs built with mass market networks to deal with the necessities of the CFD community, in particular for unstructured implicit CFD solvers that require a very irregular pattern of communications. We report the initial findings from a series of experiments with some well known benchmarks to determine CFD application sensitivity to machine communication parameters. This is done by running these benchmarks on a cluster in which the communication network has been modified to allow an increase of the bandwidth by adding multiple channels and a reduction on the latency by using a lightweight protocol like the M-Via.