On the adequacy of message-passing parallel supercomputers for solving neutron transport problems
A coarse-grained, static-scheduling parallelization of the standard iterative scheme used for solving the discrete-ordinates approximation of the neutron transport equation is described. The parallel algorithm is based on a decomposition of the angular domain along the discrete ordinates, thus naturally producing a set of completely uncoupled systems of equations in each iteration. Implementation of the parallel code on Intcl's iPSC/2 hypercube, and solutions to test problems are presented as evidence of the high speedup and efficiency of the parallel code. The performance of the parallel code on the iPSC/2 is analyzed, and a model for the CPU time as a function of the problem size (order of angular quadrature) and the number of participating processors is developed and validated against measured CPU times. The performance model is used to speculate on the potential of massively parallel computers for significantly speeding up real-life transport calculations at acceptable efficiencies. We conclude that parallel computers with a few hundred processors are capable of producing large speedups at very high efficiencies in very large three-dimensional problems. 10 refs., 8 figs.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE/ER
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-84OR21400
- OSTI ID:
- 6858482
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-901121-6; ON: DE90016041; TRN: 90-029229
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Association for Computing Machinery/Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers supercomputing conference, New York, NY (USA), 12-16 Nov 1990
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS//MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
NEUTRON TRANSPORT
PARALLEL PROCESSING
ALGORITHMS
HYPERCUBE COMPUTERS
ITERATIVE METHODS
NUMERICAL SOLUTION
PERFORMANCE
COMPUTERS
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
NEUTRAL-PARTICLE TRANSPORT
PROGRAMMING
RADIATION TRANSPORT
654003* - Radiation & Shielding Physics- Neutron Interactions with Matter
990200 - Mathematics & Computers