NPAC Technical Report SCCS-668
Design Issues for the Parallelization of an Optimal Interpolation Algorithm
Gregor von Laszewski, Michael Seablom, Miloje Makivic, Peter Lyster, Sanjay Ranka
Submitted December 5 1994
Abstract
A regionalized optimal interpolation algorithm is currently used at
the NASA Goddard Data Assimilation Office (DAO) for four dimensional
data assimilation. Instead of using all observations regions are
defined to approximate the solution. The sequential code for the
regionalized optimal interpolation is very complex and in its current
form unusable for MIMD machines.
This paper describes the efforts at the DAO to parallelize the
existing sequential algorithm. We outline three strategies
transforming the sequential algorithm gradually to MIMD machines.
A major requirement for the new parallel algorithm is the portability
to as many MIMD machines as possible. Therefore, the parallel code
uses state of the art programming languages, message passing
libraries, and an object oriented tool library. For concrete results
we are targeting the IBM SP2, Cray T3D, Intel Paragon, and a network
of DEC Alpha workstations. We show preliminary results on a DEC Alpha
workstation farm.