Architecture-independent environment for developing engineering software on MIMD computers
Valimohamed, Karim Abdulazeez
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/23546
Description
Title
Architecture-independent environment for developing engineering software on MIMD computers
Author(s)
Valimohamed, Karim Abdulazeez
Issue Date
1990
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Lopez, Leonard
Department of Study
Engineering, Civil
Computer Science
Discipline
Engineering, Civil
Computer Science
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Engineering, Civil
Computer Science
Language
eng
Abstract
Engineers are constantly faced with solving problems of increasing complexity and detail. They frequently rely upon numerical methods to solve these problems, and their insatiable appetite for improved performance from computing hardware has reached a point where the computational requirements exceed reasonable expectations of the performance of Von-Neumann (serial) computers.
Multiple Instruction stream Multiple Data stream (MIMD) computers have been developed to overcome the performance limitations of serial computers. The hardware architectures of MIMD computers vary considerably and are much more sophisticated than serial computers. Developing large scale software for a variety of MIMD computers is difficult and expensive. There is a need to provide tools that facilitate programming these machines.
The first part of this dissertation examines the issues that must be considered to develop those tools. The two main areas of concern were architecture independence and data management. Architecture independent software facilitates software portability and improves the longevity and utility of the software product. It provides some form of insurance for the investment of time and effort that goes into developing the software. The management of data is a crucial aspect of solving large engineering problems. It must be considered in light of the new hardware organizations that are available.
The second part of the dissertation describes the functional design and implementation of a software environment that facilitates developing architecture independent software for large engineering applications. The topics of discussion include: a description of the model that supports the development of architecture independent software; identifying and exploiting concurrency within the application program; data coherence; engineering data base and memory management.
The scope of the research is restricted to the development of the conceptual design of the environment and the implementation of a prototype system on a distributed memory system. The results obtained from developing two application problems related to finite element analysis are discussed. It is shown that the application program is indeed architecture-independent however the implementation of a shared memory prototype is left for future work.
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