The Design , Implementation , and Performance of a Parallel Ocean Circulation Model

We describe new parallelization techniques applied to a highly parallel ocean circulation application code – the Miami Isopycnic Ocean Coordinate Model or MICOM. We compare three parallel architectures executing MICOM: vector, massively parallel, and a multiprocessor workstation. Results from a high resolution 0.08 MICOM North Atlantic basin calculation on the Cray T3D are described briefly. This high-resolution calculation gives qualitatively different results than lower resolution runs implying that a resolution threshold must be crossed to retain fidelity to observed ocean currents.