Abstract

The NAS parallel benchmarks are a set of applications that embody the key characteristics of typical processing in computational aerodynamics. Five of these, the kernel benchmarks, have been implemented on the PVM system, a software system for network-based concurrent computing, with a view to determining the efficacy of networked environments for high-performance computational aerodynamics applications. We present results of porting and executing the NPB kernels in three different cluster environments using low- to medium-powered workstations on Ethernet and two types of FDDI networks. Our results indicate that mediocre to good performance could be obtained despite the communications intensive nature of the applications. In most cases, we were able to achieve performance levels within an order of magnitude of a Cray Y/MP-1 on 8-workstation clusters via optimizations to the PVM infrastructure alone, i.e. with little or no algorithmic modifications. However, our results also indicate th...

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