4. Parallel and high-performance computing
As noted earlier, a summary of the current capabilities of some of the
multiphysics methods on current computing platforms is provided in
Figure 1. In order to truly leverage the power of these methods in
real-world applications, one needs to utilize parallel and HPC
resources, which we discuss below. In current terms, high-performance
computing (HPC) broadly involves the use of new architectures (such as
GPU computing), computing in distributed systems, cloud-based computing,
and computing in parallel to massively parallel platforms or extreme
hardware architectures for running computational models (Figure 2,
left). The term applies especially to systems that function with large
floating-point operations per second (teraflops 1012,
petaflops 1015, exaflops 1018)
regimes or systems requiring extensive memory. HPC has remained a
sustained and powerful driving force for multiphysics modeling and
scientific computing and central to applications in science,
engineering, and medicine.