| This dissertation studies the effects of the "key-value-ref" model in the computational field simulation software development process. The motivation of this study is rooted in addressing the high cost of designing and implementing high-performance simulation software that runs on modern parallel supercomputers. Unlike traditional sequential programming where a number of effective tools exist, parallel super-cluster programming contains many low-level constructs that increase the complexity in the implementation of a software design. More importantly, the dynamic nature of the simulation problems brings additional challenges into the designing stage. Often a designer has to face a number of competing factors and needs to devise strategies to make a trade-off and to find better software structures that can be realized with reasonable performance and flexibility. Proper modeling can help to address many of these issues in the design and implementation stages. Using a two-phase Lagrangian particle-field simulation problem as a case study, this dissertation shows that the "key-space" concept developed in the "key-value-ref" model within this dissertation is able to model the essential components in available design approaches for parallel computational field simulation, and that the model also helps to expose the design choices in a more sensible way, and also offers certain guidance towards the crafting of a better software structure. In addition, a programming interface is also designed and implemented that allows the development of computational field simulation software utilizing the "key-space" concept. Empirical results show that the current implementation provides a reasonable performance compared to those highly optimized hand-tuned programs.;Key words: parallel programming, software composition, resource management, numerical simulation... |
