Application of Multiblock Grid and Dual-Level Parallelism in Coastal Ocean Circulation Modeling

Abstract

Numerical grid generation techniques play an important role in the numerical solution of partial differential equations on arbitrarily shaped regions. For coastal ocean modeling, in particular, a one-block grid covering the region under study is commonly used. Most bodies of water of interest have complicated coastlines; e.g., the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea. Since such one-block grids are not boundary conforming, the number of unused grid points can be a relatively large portion of the entire domain space. Other disadvantages of using a one block grid include large memory requirements and long computer processing time. Multiblock grid generation and dual-level parallel techniques are used to overcome these problems. Message Passing Interface (MPI) is used to parallelize the Multiblock Grid Princeton Ocean Model (MGPOM) such that each grid block is assigned to a unique processor. Since not all grid blocks are of the same size, the workload varies between MPI processes. To alleviate this, OpenMP dynamic threading is used to improve load balance. Performance results from the MGPOM model on a one-block grid, a twenty block grid, and a forty-two block grid after a 90-day simulation for the Persian Gulf demonstrate the efficacy of the dual-level parallel code version.