Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Liu, C.-H.
Right arrow Articles by Leung, D. Y. C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Performance Analysis of a Linux Pc Cluster Using a Direct Numerical Simulation of Fluid Turbulence Code

Chun-Ho Liu

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, HONG KONG (LIUCHUNHO{at}GRADUATE.HKU.HK)

Chat-Ming Woo

COMPUTER CENTRE, THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, HONG KONG

Dennis Y. C. Leung

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG, HONG KONG (LIUCHUNHO{at}GRADUATE.HKU.HK)

In this paper, we have tested the parallel performance of an Intel Xeon-based Linux PC cluster using a finite element code for direct numerical simulation (DNS) of incompressible fluid turbulence. The parallel performance of the PC cluster, which used up to 64 2.8 GHz processors, was evaluated by comparing three scales of DNS trial runs consisting of 3.3, 5.8, and 10.1 million elements. Subroutines of different natures were contrasted to investigate the scalability of the DNS code. For DNS calculation of sufficiently large scale, the subroutines showed reasonable parallel efficiency. Doubling the number of processors reduced the CPU time by about 40%. Of particular interest was the CPU time required by the two subroutines handling interprocessor communication that was fairly constant within the range of processors tested. PC Linux clusters are thus affordable platforms, compared with more expensive supercomputers, to conduct large-scale scientific computing for fluid turbulence research.

Key Words: Computational fluid dynamics • direct numerical simulation • fluid turbulence • Linux cluster • distributed and parallel computing • finite element method

International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, Vol. 19, No. 4, 365-374 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1094342005056133
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?