Automated mesh decomposition and concurrent finite element analysis for hypercube multiprocessor computers (Q1097088)

This paper discusses a concurrent finite element formulation for linear and nonlinear transient analysis using an explicit time integration scheme. The formulation has been developed for execution on hypercube multiprocessor computers. The formulation includes a new decomposition algorithm which automatically divides an arbitrary finite element mesh into regions and assigns each region to a processor on the hypercube. The algorithm selects the assignment of regions so as to minimize interprocessor communication and to balance the computational load across the processors. The decomposition algorithm is deterministic in nature and relies on a scheme which reduces the bandwidth of the matrix representation of the connectivities in the mesh. The algorithms have been implemeted on a 32 processor Intel hypercube (the iPSC/d5 machine): speedup factors of greater than 31 have been obtained. Performance limitations of the hypercube architecture for finite element analysis are discussed.