Harnessing High-Performance Computers for Computational Steering

摘要

This study presents a computational steering project together with optimization approaches to counteract problems of interactive use when coupling a supercomputer with a visualization interface, allowing for user interaction during a running computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The underlying Lattice Boltzmann-based CFD computation and grid generation is performed on a supercomputer while the steering and data visualization of the simulation is done on a graphical front-end application on an external system. The interaction during a simulation run comprises not only the variation of parameters, but also the modification of the geometry and hence the computational grid. The simulation kernel shows good parallel efficiency on the Hitachi SR8000 supercomputer at the Leibniz Computing Center (LRZ) and therefore enables an online simulation which instantly reacts to user manipulations.