On estimating machine dependency of fine- and coarse-grained parallel structural computations

Fine– and coarse–grained parallel methods for the calculation of structural eigenvalues are evaluated using two distributed–memory parallel computers having similar architectures but a significant difference in the ratio between calculation speed and communication speed. A simple computational model is used to devise a simulation procedure that enables predictions to be made on one parallel computer of the solution times that would be obtained on parallel computers having different values of this ratio. Thus the speed–up and efficiency of parallel methods can be presented in a general form rather than being specific to the computer used to obtain them.