Parallelization Facility for Handling Irregular Grid Problems

Many state-of-the-art algorithms require the use of irregular computational grids. Currently no products exist that can assist the user in parallelizing such a program; however, research conducted at a number of institutes suggests methods for handling irregular problems. This proposal suggests the commercialization of several research projects into the FORGE 90 software. The FORGE 90 programming environment is recognized as the most powerful parallel programming facility commercially available. FORGE 90 is the only such system that can translate an existing serial program for distributed memory parallel computers. The developers of FORGE 90 recognize that the major limitation of the FORGE 90 system is its inability to handle irregular problems. We have identified several pertinent research projects conducted at NASA/Langley's ICASE which suggest runtime analysis tools that can examine a programs data distribution and establish a communication pattern for transferring the data between the processors. Additionally, it would be important to supply the user with a facility to arrive at an optimal decomposition of data on irregular grids across the parallel system. NASA/Ames Research Center and several other research groups have conducted research which can support the development of commercial tools to solve this problem.