Project Summary
The PINEAPL project will be a coordinated effort to produce a general purpose
library of parallel numerical software suitable for a wide range of
computationally intensive industrial applications and to port several
application codes which use this library to parallel computers; the initial
coverage of the library
will be determined by the requirements of the applications.
The project includes a number of key features:
- a closely coupled problem definition phase in which common areas of
numerical interest in the applications will be identified to enable standard
solutions to be used throughout the project and in other porting activities,
- the involvement of numerical experts at an early stage in the activity
to provide guidance on the interfaces to mathematical software, the
selection of algorithms and their use in practice,
- a proven mechanism for the commercial exploitation of expertise
found in universities and research centres in addition to technology transfer
and education through these institutions,
- early consideration of the re-usability of numerical software in subsequent
activities and exploitation of these results through NAG, an established
software vendor with a large European industrial customer base,
- the establishment of broader industrial requirements through existing
mechanisms such as the NAG Users' Association.
The end-users in the consortium will take advantage of the opportunity provided
by the project
to introduce new mathematical models and techniques into existing applications.
Reduced wall-clock
execution times will allow users to experiment with more
configurations in their simulations, thereby achieving better designs and
gaining new physical insights into their problem. Larger problems may be
solved or greater accuracy in the solution may be achieved with these new
techniques.
The consortium will use existing tools,
which offer information about mathematical models and numerical
methods to build confidence in the new techniques.
The major result from the project will be a portable library of high
performance mathematical software
suitable for both the application codes and
for other aspects of parallel computing such as optimizing load balancing and
communication.
There are more than 3000 industrial and academic organisations using general
purpose numerical libraries in Europe alone.
The demand for similar
libraries for distributed memory parallel machines is increasing as more of
these users take advantage of networks and clusters of workstations and
distributed memory computers.
The relevance of the library software to industry will be demonstrated in the
project applications and further assured by advice received from the other
industrial interests.
Target machines for the project will range from low cost networks of
workstations that are common in SMEs
to high-end distributed memory parallel computers.
The objective in producing a numerical
library is to encapsulate efficient computation (and communication) into easily
used modules, insulating the user from the details of these complex areas of
expertise.