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A Parallel Approach for the Generation of Unstructured Meshes with Billions of Elements on Distributed-Memory Supercomputers

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Abstract

This paper describes a parallel approach for the rapid generation of ultra-large-scale unstructured meshes on distributed-memory supercomputers. A medium-sized initial mesh is prepared first. Afterwards, a two-level domain decomposition (DD) strategy is used to split and distribute the initial mesh to different cores. Finally, the parallel mesh generation, comprising a recursive procedure which includes parallel surface recovery, parallel boundary updating, and parallel mesh multiplication, is performed. The two-level DD differentiates the intra-node and inter-node communication to reduce communication overheads. A global indexing and updating scheme is used to make the mesh multiplication devoid of communication. A new parallel surface recovery algorithm without communication is developed to maintain the fidelity of the resulting mesh model to the original geometric model. Tests of the parallel approach for some real-life problems on supercomputers (Dawning-5000A and Tianhe-2) are presented. Issues regarding the speedup, parallel efficiency, and mesh quality are discussed. Results show that the proposed parallel approach has a reasonably good scalability, that the quality of the resulting mesh is improved, and that ultra-large-scale meshes with billions of elements can be generated quickly.

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Acknowledgments

This work is financially supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program) of China (2012AA01A307) and the Natural Science Foundation of China (11272214 and 51475287). The authors would like to thank Shanghai Supercomputer Center and Guangzhou Supercomputer Center for help and useful advice. The authors are also indebted to khytti Whitaker, an English teacher from America; an anonymous Ph.D. candidate from Australia; an anonymous research associate from Europe; and Nicholas Allen, an exchange student from England, for sacrificing their precious time to proofread and polish the English of our paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Xiao-qing Wang & Xian-long Jin

  2. State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Xiao-qing Wang & Xian-long Jin

  3. Shanghai Supercomputer Center, Shanghai, China

    Da-zhi Kou & Jia-hui Chen

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  1. Xiao-qing Wang
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  2. Xian-long Jin
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Correspondence to Xiao-qing Wang.

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Wang, Xq., Jin, Xl., Kou, Dz. et al. A Parallel Approach for the Generation of Unstructured Meshes with Billions of Elements on Distributed-Memory Supercomputers. Int J Parallel Prog 45, 680–710 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10766-016-0452-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10766-016-0452-3

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