EPPOD - A PROBLEM-SOLVING ENVIRONMENT FOR PARALLEL ELECTRONIC PROTOTYPING OF PHYSICAL OBJECT DESIGN

One of the grand challenges for computer applications is the creation of a system that will provide accurate computer simulations of physica l objects coupled with powerful design optimization tools to allow opt imum prototyping and the final design of a broad range of physical obj ects, We refer to such a software environment as electronic prototypin g for physical object design (EPPOD), The research challenges in build ing such systems are in software integration, in utilizing massive par allelism to satisfy their large computational requirements, in incorpo rating knowledge into the entire electronic prototyping process, in cr eating intelligent user interfaces for such systems, and in advancing the algorithmic infrastructure needed to support the desired functiona lity, In this paper we address issues related to the parallel processi ng of the computationally intensive components of the EPPOD problem so lving environment on message passing parallel machines and present its software architecture, The parallel methodology adopted to map the un derlying computations to parallel machines is based on the optimal dec omposition of continuous and discrete geometric data associated with t he physical object, One of the main goals of this methodology is the r euse of existing software parts while implementing various components of the EPPOD system on parallel computational environments, Finally, s ome performance data of the parallel algorithmic infrastructured devel oped are listed and discussed, (C) 1997 Academic Press.