Parallelization of Scientific applications on the SX-4 : The CSCS/SCSC-NEC joint program in application porting and development : Toward reality in scientific simulations: NEC's 21st Century Odyssey

With the installation of the NEC SX-4/16 in 1996 at the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing (CSCS/SCSC), CSCS/SCSC and NEC embarked on a joint program for the porting and development of applications of strategic importance to the Swiss user community, also known as the 'SX-4 Task Force.' The primary objective of this collaborative program was to contribute to the progress of the users' R&D programs by ensuring optimum use of the installed SX-4 supercomputer. The results presented demonstrate the great benefit to the user community from the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and the Swiss universities. Significant contributions to computational science in Switzerland could be made. Examples are given where the outstanding performance obtained for key application codes opened the door, in the sense of true feasibility breakthroughs, to novel types of simulations and modeling. Notable examples are the simulation of molecules of unprecedented size and the direct simulation of turbulence at resolutions unattainable thus far.