Special purpose computers for the time domain advance of Maxwell's equations

摘要

Several special-purpose computer designs are considered for the efficient time advance of Maxwell's equations. These involve both paralleling and pipelining techniques with specialized hardware that takes advantage of the simplicity and symmetry of Maxwell's equations. A time speedup of 1000 over operation on a VAX at reduced cost seems immediately achievable. There is a direct applicability to algorithms for general-purpose computers as well. An apparently new normalization for the electric and magnetic fields, the preferred use of E and H conditions at different boundaries, and an alternative method of computing Huygen's sources are discussed.