TOWARD PARALLEL MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE FOR ELLIPTIC PARTIAL-DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

Three approaches to parallelizing important components of the mathemat ical software package ELLPACK are considered: an explicit approach usi ng compiler directives available only on the target machine, an automa tic approach using an optimizing and parallelizing precompiler, and a two-level approach based on extensive use of a set of low level comput ational kernels. The focus is on shared memory architectures. Each app roach to parallelization is described in detail, along with a discussi on of the effort involved. Performance on a test problem, using up to sixteen processors of a Sequent Symmetry S81, is reported and discusse d. Implications for the parallelization of a broad class of mathematic al software are drawn.