A parallel finite element program on a Beowulf cluster

Some experiences on writing a parallel finite element code on a Beowulf cluster are shown. This cluster is made up of seven Pentium III processors connected by Fast Ethernet. The code was written in C++ making use of MPI as message passing library and parallel extensible toolkit for scientific computations. The code presented here is a general framework where specific applications may be written. In particular CFD applications regarding Laplace equations, Navier-Stokes and shallow water flows have been implemented. The parallel performance of this application code is assessed and several numerical results are presented.