Porting industrial codes and developing sparse linear solvers on parallel computers

Abstract

We address the main issues when porting existing codes from serial to parallel computers and when developing portable parallel software on MIMD multiprocessors (shared memory, virtual shared memory, and distributed memory multiprocessors, and networks of computers). We discuss the use of numerical libraries as a way of developing portable and efficient parallel code. We illustrate this by using examples from our experience in porting industrial codes and in designing parallel numerical libraries. We report in some detail on the parallelization of scientific applications coming from Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales and from Aérospatiale, and we illustrate how it is possible to develop portable and efficient numerical software by considering the parallel solution of sparse linear systems of equations.