APPLICATION OF MASSIVELY-PARALLEL COMPUTATION TO INTEGRAL-EQUATION MODELS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING

Integral equation methods are widely used in the analysis and the design of electromagnetic systems. Traditionally, the limiting parts of the simulation have been the memory required for storing the dense matrix and the computational time required for solving the matrix equation. We report on the extension of integral equation solutions to new wavelength regimes and on completion of the solution in an amount of time that is practical for engineering applications. The numerical solution of the integral equation is computed on scalable, distributed-memory parallel computers. Essential to the numerical solution was the development of a complex-valued, highly optimized, dense-matrix equation solution algorithm for scalable machines. A portion of the research outlined is the development of this production-level library routine for the solution of linear equations on parallel computers. A convenient interface, useful for integral equation solutions, among others, was specifically developed in this study. This algorithm has the conveniences offered by the sequential libraries, can be easily ported between parallel platforms, and has been placed in the public domain.