Parallel solution of the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations and other experiences using BlockComm-Chameleon and PCN on the IBM SP, Intel iPSC/860, and clusters of workstations

Abstract

Time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau (TDGL) equations are considered for modeling a thin-film finite size superconductor placed under magnetic field. The problem then leads to the use of so-called natural boundary conditions. Computational domain is partitioned into subdomains and bond variables are used in obtaining the corresponding discrete system of equations. An efficient time-differencing method based on the Forward Euler method is developed. Finally, a variable strength magnetic field resulting in a vortex motion in Type II High-critical-temperature superconducting films is introduced. The authors tackled the problem using two different state-of-the-art parallel computing tools: BlockComm/Chameleon and PCN. They had access to two high-performance distributed memory supercomputers: the Intel iPSC/860 and IBM SP1. They also tested the codes using, as a parallel computing environment, a cluster of Sun Sparc workstations.