| Abstract |
Simulation of physical systems has become the third leg of
investigation
in many scientific disciplines, along with theory and experimentation.
We will address the problem of providing software support for simulation of complex physical systems requiring multiple physical models,
potentially at multiple scales and resolutions. Employing multiple
physical models presents several difficult challenges, both in modeling
the physics correctly, and in efficiently using multiple simulation codes
to model a complete physical system. In particular, the individual
models must be coupled, to allow them to exchange information either at
boundaries where the models align in physical space, or in areas where
the models overlap in space. We describe our efforts to address three
main parts of the problem, being developed within the Maryland InterComm
project: (1) comprehensive support for specifying at runtime what data is
to be transferred, (2) flexibly and efficiently deciding when the data
should be moved, and (3) effectively deploying multiple coupled
simulation codes in a high performance distributed computing environment
(the Grid). A main goal of the project is to minimize the changes to
each individual simulation code, because those codes are generally
complex and difficult to modify. |
