Efficient Parallel Architecture Simulation of 3D Missile/Divert Jet Flowfields Using PowerMac G4 Clusters

"Solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for modeling 3D interceptor missile flowfields and divert jet interactions requires the availability of high performance, massively parallel, computing facilities since the grid resolution requirements and largeequation sets can necessitate runtimes exceeding weeks and even months, depending on the problem. Reasonable turnaround times routinely require access to over one hundred parallel processors. The availability of such large computational resources usingstandard supercomputers (i.e., HPCC) is extremely limited due to large acquisition and operating costs. This limits the level of modeling fidelity attainable for systems analysis and impedes the design and analysis of complex missile systems. Acommercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Apple Power Mac computer cluster system, in conjunction with a highly parallelized CFD simulation code routinely used for missile flowfield analysis, and specially developed networking software, is proposed which willprovide a fast, efficient, accurate, and highly cost effective alternative to traditional high-cost mainframes and conventional PC clusters. Benchmarking to date has shown significant performance benefits in the use of an Apple cluster over that ofconventional Pentium PC clusters. Computer hardware availability is the principal limitation to fast throughput in high fidelity missile system analyses. Successful operation of the proposed Apple Power Mac