AN EFFICIENT PARALLEL ALGORITHM FOR SOLVING N-NEPHRON MODELS OF THE RENAL INNER MEDULLA

A parallel algorithm for solving the multinephron model of the renal inner medulla is developed. The intrinsic nature of this problem supplies sufficient symmetry for a high-level parallelism on distributed-memory parallel machines such as the iPSC/860, Paragon, and CM-5. Parallelization makes it feasible to study interesting models such as the rat kidney with 30, 000 nephrons. On a high-end work station, one can study systems with 100 nephrons, while on a 32-node iPSC/860 or Paragon we can handle more than 1000 nephrons. A nearly perfect speedup is achieved by even distribution of load and minimizing the cost of communication.