Load-balancing for parallel adaptive unstructured grids

Numerical Grid Generation in Computational Field Simulations, Ed. M. Cross., B. K. Soni, J. F. Thompson, J. Hauser, P. R. Eiseman, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference, held at the University of Greenwich, pp.781-790, July 1998

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Centre for Numerical Modelling and Process Analysis,
University of Greenwich,
London, SEJ8 6PJ, UK
email: C.Walshaw@gre.ac.uk

Abstract
A parallel method for the dynamic partitioning of unstructured meshes is outlined. The method includes diffusive load-balancing techniques and an iterative optimisation technique known as relative gain optimisation which both balances the workload and attempts to minimise the interprocessor communications overhead. It can also optionally include a multilevel strategy. Experiments on a series of adaptively refined meshes indicate that the algorithm provides partitions of an equivalent or higher quality to static partitioners (which do not reuse the existing partition) and much more rapidly. Perhaps more importantly, the algorithm results in only a small fraction of the amount of data migration compared to the static partitioners.