Performance of a Parallel Algorithm for Solving the Neutron Diffusion Equation on the Hypercube.

摘要

The one-group, steady state neutron diffusion equation in two- dimensional Cartesian geometry is solved using the nodal method technique. By decoupling sets of equations representing the neutron current continuity along the length of rows and columns of computational cells a new iterative algorithm is derived that is more suitable to solving large practical problems. This algorithm is highly parallelizable and is implemented on the Intel iPSC/2 hypercube in three versions which differ essentially in the total size of communicated data. Even though speedup was achieved, the efficiency is very low when many processors are used leading to the conclusion that the hypercube is not as well suited for this algorithm as shared memory machines. 10 refs., 1 fig., 3 tabs.