{"title":"Plasma Physics Calculations on a Parallel Macintosh Cluster","authors":"V. Decyk, Dean E. Dauger, P. Kokelaar","doi":"10.1238/PHYSICA.TOPICAL.084A00085","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We have constructed a parallel cluster consisting of 16 Apple Macintosh G3 computers running the MacOS, and achieved very good performance on numerically intensive, parallel plasma particle-in-cell simulations. A subset of the MPI message-passing library was implemented in Fortran77 and C. This library enabled us to port code, without modification, from other parallel processors to the Macintosh cluster. For large problems where message packets are large and relatively few in number, performance of 50–150 Mflops/node is possible, depending on the problem. This is fast enough that 3D calculations can be routinely done. Unlike Unix-based clusters, no special expertise in operating systems is required to build and run the cluster. Full details are available on our web site: http://exodus.physics.ucla.edu/appleseed/.","PeriodicalId":20067,"journal":{"name":"Physica Scripta","volume":"2000 1","pages":"85 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2000-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1238/PHYSICA.TOPICAL.084A00085","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Physica Scripta","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1238/PHYSICA.TOPICAL.084A00085","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PHYSICS, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 5
Abstract
We have constructed a parallel cluster consisting of 16 Apple Macintosh G3 computers running the MacOS, and achieved very good performance on numerically intensive, parallel plasma particle-in-cell simulations. A subset of the MPI message-passing library was implemented in Fortran77 and C. This library enabled us to port code, without modification, from other parallel processors to the Macintosh cluster. For large problems where message packets are large and relatively few in number, performance of 50–150 Mflops/node is possible, depending on the problem. This is fast enough that 3D calculations can be routinely done. Unlike Unix-based clusters, no special expertise in operating systems is required to build and run the cluster. Full details are available on our web site: http://exodus.physics.ucla.edu/appleseed/.
我们构建了一个由16台运行MacOS的Apple Macintosh G3计算机组成的并行集群,并在数值密集型并行等离子体粒子胞内模拟中取得了非常好的性能。MPI消息传递库的一个子集在Fortran77和c中实现。这个库使我们能够将代码不经修改地从其他并行处理器移植到Macintosh集群。对于消息包较大且数量相对较少的大型问题,根据问题的不同,性能可能达到50-150 Mflops/node。这个速度足够快,可以进行常规的3D计算。与基于unix的集群不同,构建和运行集群不需要操作系统方面的专业知识。详细信息请访问我们的网站:http://exodus.physics.ucla.edu/appleseed/。
期刊介绍:
Physica Scripta is an international journal for original research in any branch of experimental and theoretical physics. Articles will be considered in any of the following topics, and interdisciplinary topics involving physics are also welcomed:
-Atomic, molecular and optical physics-
Plasma physics-
Condensed matter physics-
Mathematical physics-
Astrophysics-
High energy physics-
Nuclear physics-
Nonlinear physics.
The journal aims to increase the visibility and accessibility of research to the wider physical sciences community. Articles on topics of broad interest are encouraged and submissions in more specialist fields should endeavour to include reference to the wider context of their research in the introduction.