The principal objective of the PINEAPL Project is to produce a library of parallel numerical software that meets the following requirements:

• the problems addressed by the library should be relevant to a wide range of industries,
• the library should be portable and efficient across a wide range of parallel machines,
• the numerical algorithms must be accurate, stable and robust,
• existing software should be used as far as possible,
• the software and documentation should be produced to commercial quality and should meet recognized standards and pass strict quality control processing.

The end-users' application codes have been chosen to represent a varied, if not comprehensive, cross-section of industrial problems ranging through electromagnetic, fluid dynamics, chemical reaction, oil reservoir simulation, beam propagation and thermal applications. The numerical software required to solve these problems includes, dense, banded and sparse linear algebra, partial differential equations, discrete Fourier transforms, load-balancing and optimization. This choice of application codes will ensure a substantial degree of broadness of applicability for the numerical library. A summary of the contents list of the numerical library is given in here

The numerical software will be designed through close collaboration between the end-users and numerical experts in the consortium; the applicability of the numerical software will be demonstrated by incorporating library routines into the end-users' 7 industrial applications. Contact with external collaborators and other related EC funded projects (EUROPORT) and user groups such as the NAG User's Association will give further input to the software design and specification to ensure that the needs of a larger industrial audience are met. The software specifications will be published (electronically on a project bulletin-board) for public comment and every opportunity will be taken to publicise and promote the availability of PINEAPL material.

Each of the end-user applications has been identified as being important to their businesses. In each case the end-user has stated performance expectations from work carried out in the PINEAPL Project. The intention is to measure the performance improvements achieved by the use of numerical software developed in the PINEAPL Project against the end-users' expectations, to gauge the success of the library software.

The portability of the library material will allow implementations on a range of parallel machines and networks of workstations. When the library development is complete, implementations of the library will be available on a number of platforms.

All of the numerical software included in the library will be tested for accuracy and stability using an existing tool, PRECISE. PRECISE is based on well-understood theory but is only in prototype form; development work in the project will bring PRECISE to a mature and commercial quality.

All of the library software will meet recognised national, international or de facto standards to aid portability as well as internal standards. Tools used within NAG will be used to verify the adherence to language standards of the library software. In addition, the library software will also be subject to the same rigorous testing and quality assurance procedures as all of NAG's products.