S. Nguyen, B. Zook and X. Zhang
``Parallelizing FDTD Methods for
Solving Electromagnetic Scattering Problems",

Applications on Advanced Archtecture Computers,
G. Astfalk Eds., SIAM Press,
1996. (ISBN 0-89871-368-4)

Abstract
--------

Finite-Defference Time-Doman (FDTD) is an important numerical method for
solving electromagnetic scattering problems.
Solutions for these problems are computationally intensive.
In addition, large problems require large amounts of memory, making
distributed memory desirable.
This paper describes distributed FDTD methods and their comparative
performance
on a
distributed workstation network using PVM,
on the Intel iPSC/860 and the CM-5 multicomputers.
Our objectives are to
provide insight into implementation and performance
issues for FDTD applications on general-purpose
message-passing architectures; to investigate implications
to network variations; and to evaluate the computing scalabilities
on the three network systems by
examining execution and communication patterns of the distributed FDTD
methods.
Since solving
partial differential equations using finite-difference techniques
is quite common in many other
application areas, the work described here should be of considerable
interest in computational science and engineering.