CONCURRENT BOUNDARY-ELEMENT COMPUTATION

A major limitation of the boundary element method (BEM) for the soluti on of electrical potential problems is the long computational time req uired. However, a large portion of the calculations involved can be vi ewed as being parallel in nature and can therefore be computed concurr ently. This paper makes an effort to increase the efficiency of the BE M process using transputer-based multiprocessor computing techniques. The algorithms developed may equally well be applied to any multiproce ssor system. The application selected to demonstrate the technique is the solution of an electrostatic problem governed by a two-dimensional Laplace equation. A parallel algorithm for problem setup and field ex traction using BEM is designed and implemented on a transputer array. Special attention is directed to the utilization of the parallel proce ssors to achieve maximum efficiency. The analysis in this work concent rates on the communication strategies for passing data between process ors as well as a consideration of the workload attributed to each proc essor. The parallel algorithms were implemented using 3L Parallel Fort ran; however, the choice of topology for the overall BEM implementatio n was limited by the fact that certain parts of the algorithm could on ly utilize a pipeline configuration of processors. Comprehensive resul ts for the parallel BEM algorithm are given and they are encouraging, indicating that parallel processing has much to offer when applied to the boundary element method.