Comparison of Direct Particle Simulation on the MasPar MP-2 and the Connection Machine CM-2

摘要

Particle simulation as applied in the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is a technique for analyzing low density flows and is used extensively for engineering analysis of aerospace vehicles. This work compares two implementations of this method on outwardly similar massively parallel architectures. The MasPar MP-2 and the Connection Machine CM-2 are both massively parallel SIMD architectures with a data parallel paradigm. Internally, however, the two machines differ substantially. The more recent, and more balanced architectural approach of the MasPar MP-2 results in better performance of the MP-2 for direct particle simulation.