DISTRIBUTED RUN-TIME VISUALIZATION AND SOLUTION STEERING OF PARALLEL-FLOW SIMULATIONS

A run-time visualization and solution-steering tool, TPview, has been developed to overcome difficulties commonly encountered with large-sca le numerical simulations on high-performance parallel computer systems . TPview provides the interface between the parallel computer system a nd the visualization software running on a remote workstation, During the computation cycle, data distributed across multiple processors are periodically sent via sockets to the workstation for rendering., In a ddition, internal parameters of the simulation code can be modified us ing a user-defined graphical interface, enabling remote guiding of the solution procedure, It is shown that such a run-time visualization an d solution-steering tool can be implemented with minimal effort from t he programmer and end user. Examples are presented of the use of TPvie w in conjunction with a parallel multiblock flow solver and a commerci al visualization package. These examples demonstrate its ability to pr ovide greater insights for the analysis of complex flow simulations. ( C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.