Tecolote: An object-oriented framework for physics development

摘要

The authors describe a C++ physics development environment, called the Tecolote Framework, which allows model developers to work more efficiently and accurately. This Framework contains a variety of meshes, operators, and parallel fields, as well as an input/output (I/O) subsystem and graphics capabilities. Model developers can inherit Tecolote's generic model interface and use the Framework's high-level field and operator components to write parallel physics equations. New Tecolote models are easily registered with the Framework, and they can be built and called directly from the input file, which greatly expedites model installation. In the process of developing an extensible and robust framework, they have found appealing solutions to some of the serious problems they encounter when parallelizing and extending the older codes. They also discuss memory and performance issues for a large hydrodynamics application built in this Framework.