The Science and Technology Agency of Japan began an Earth Simulator project
in the 1997 fiscal year, that will be able to forecast various earth pheno
mena through simulation. GeoFEM is a parallel finite element software for s
olving problems involving the solid earth. In this paper, we briefly descri
be the GeoFEM project and discuss GeoFEM's capability for large-scale analy
sis and the results of simple benchmark analyses. At this stage, the larges
t linear elastic problem that has been solved by GeoFEM involves more than
10(8) degrees of freedom (DOF). In the 2001 fiscal year, we will attempt to
solve a 10(10) DOF problem using the Earth Simulator. (C) 2001 Elsevier Sc
ience B.V. All rights reserved.