Skip to main content

Massively Parallel Finite Element Programming

  • Conference paper
Book cover Recent Advances in the Message Passing Interface (EuroMPI 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 6305))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Today’s large finite element simulations require parallel algorithms to scale on clusters with thousands or tens of thousands of processor cores. We present data structures and algorithms to take advantage of the power of high performance computers in generic finite element codes.

Existing generic finite element libraries often restrict the parallelization to parallel linear algebra routines. This is a limiting factor when solving on more than a few hundreds of cores. We describe routines for distributed storage of all major components coupled with efficient, scalable algorithms. We give an overview of our effort to enable the modern and generic finite element library deal.II to take advantage of the power of large clusters. In particular, we describe the construction of a distributed mesh and develop algorithms to fully parallelize the finite element calculation. Numerical results demonstrate good scalability.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Balay, S., Buschelman, K., Eijkhout, V., Gropp, W.D., Kaushik, D., Knepley, M.G., Curfman McInnes, L., Smith, B.F., Zhang, H.: PETSc users manual. Technical Report ANL-95/11 - Revision 3.0.0, Argonne National Laboratory (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Balay, S., Buschelman, K., Gropp, W.D., Kaushik, D., Knepley, M.G., Curfman McInnes, L., Smith, B.F., Zhang, H.: PETSc Web page (2009), http://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc

  3. Bangerth, W., Burstedde, C., Heister, T., Kronbichler, M.: Algorithms and Data Structures for Massively Parallel Generic Finite Element Codes (in preparation)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Bangerth, W., Hartmann, R., Kanschat, G.: deal.II Differential Equations Analysis Library, Technical Reference, http://www.dealii.org

  5. Bangerth, W., Hartmann, R., Kanschat, G.: deal.II — a General Purpose Object Oriented Finite Element Library. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software 33(4), 27 (2007)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Bruaset, A.M., Langtangen, H.P.: A comprehensive set of tools for solving partial differential equations; DiffPack. In: Dæhlen, M., Tveito, A. (eds.) Numerical Methods and Software Tools in Industrial Mathematics, pp. 61–90. Birkhäuser, Boston (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Burstedde, C., Burtscher, M., Ghattas, O., Stadler, G., Tu, T., Wilcox, L.C.: Alps: A framework for parallel adaptive pde solution. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 180(1), 012009(2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Burstedde, C., Wilcox, L.C., Ghattas, O.: p4est: Scalable algorithms for parallel adaptive mesh refinement on forests of octrees. Submitted to SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Heister, T., Kronbichler, M., Bangerth, W.: Generic finite element programming for massively parallel flow simulations. In: Eccomas 2010 Proceedings (submitted, 2010)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Heroux, M.A., Bartlett, R.A., Howle, V.E., Hoekstra, R.J., Hu, J.J., Kolda, T.G., Lehoucq, R.B., Long, K.R., Pawlowski, R.P., Phipps, E.T., Salinger, A.G., Thornquist, H.K., Tuminaro, R.S., Willenbring, J.M., Williams, A., Stanley, K.S.: An overview of the Trilinos project. ACM Trans. Math. Softw. 31, 397–423 (2005)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  11. Heroux, M.A., et al: Trilinos Web page (2009), http://trilinos.sandia.gov

  12. Kirk, B., Peterson, J.W., Stogner, R.H., Carey, G.F.: libMesh: A C++ Library for Parallel Adaptive Mesh Refinement/Coarsening Simulations. Engineering with Computers 22(3-4), 237–254 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Kronbichler, M., Bangerth, W.: Advanced numerical techniques for simulating mantle convection (in preparation)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Langtangen, H.P.: Computational Partial Differential Equations: Numerical Methods and Diffpack Programming. Texts in Computational Science and Engineering. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Logg, A.: Automating the finite element method. Arch. Comput. Methods Eng. 14(2), 93–138 (2007)

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Patzák, B., Bittnar, Z.: Design of object oriented finite element code. Advances in Engineering Software 32(10–11), 759–767 (2001)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Renard, Y., Pommier, J.: Getfem++. Technical report, INSA Toulouse (2006), http://www-gmm.insa-toulouse.fr/getfem/

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Heister, T., Kronbichler, M., Bangerth, W. (2010). Massively Parallel Finite Element Programming. In: Keller, R., Gabriel, E., Resch, M., Dongarra, J. (eds) Recent Advances in the Message Passing Interface. EuroMPI 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6305. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15646-5_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15646-5_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15645-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15646-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics