PARAMESH: a parallel adaptive mesh refinement community toolkit. P. MacNeice, K.M. Olson, C. Mobarry, R. de Fainchtein, C. Packer.

PROGRAM SUMMARY
Title of program: PARAMESH
Catalogue identifier: ADLQ
Ref. in CPC: 126(2000)330
Distribution format: tar gzip file
Operating system: UNIX
Number of bits in a word: 32
Number of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc: 103889
Keywords: Adaptive mesh refinement, Parallel programming, Structured grids, Hydrodynamics, Magnetohydrodynamics, General purpose, Other numerical.
Programming language used: Fortran
Computer: Cray T3E , SGI Onyx 2 , Beowolf Cluster , Cray J90 .

Nature of physical problem:
A common problem in gas dynamics and magnetohydrodynamic simulation is achieving the large dynamic range in spatial resolution which can be necessary to accurately model the active physical processes. These simulations also tend to require the largest computers, which inevitably implies the additional complexity of a parallel computing environment.

Method of solution
PARAMESH is a package of Fortran 90 subroutines designed to provide an application developer with an easy route to extend an existing serial code which uses a logically cartesian structured mesh into a parallel code with adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). Alternatively, in its simplest use, and with minimal effort, it can operate as a domain decomposition tool for users who want to parallelize their serial codes, but who do not wish to use adaptivity.

Restrictions on the complexity of the problem
Applications which use PARAMESH must be based on logically cartesian numerical meshes. This means that it must be possible (in principle) to map the numerical mesh onto a cartesian mesh. Common examples of meshes which satisfy this criterion are cartesian, polar, spherical, cylindrical.

Typical running time
Application dependent