A 3D Free Surface Flow and Transport Model on Different High Performance Computation Architectures

The tremendous performance increase in computer technology in recent years has led to a methodical change in engineering and environmental sciences. In addition to theory and experiment the so-called scientific computation based on mathematical models, computer simulation and optimization has become the third important pillar of research. Scientific computation is carried out on different High Performance Computational (HPC) architectures that are dominated by parallel computer systems. To obtain a maximum benefit of parallel as well as vector computers, new algorithms must be developed and adapted to the special hardware. In this chapter, an important numerical algorithm for the 3D simulation of free surface flow and salinity transport, which is widely being used in the field of research and engineering practice, was parallelized, vectorized, and investigated on different high performance computational architectures. A numerical model of the Weser estuary, which was calibrated with a large and coherent data set, was chosen for demonstrating and comparing the performance of the developed algorithms on different high performance computers. The chapter is organized in a few sections that include the numerical algorithm, the means of parallelization, and the means of vectorization. It also takes into account some remarks for using parallel vector computers. The numerical model of the Weser estuary is the basis for an analysis and for a comparison of the different high performance architectures.