Parallel computation of electric fields in a heterogeneous workstation cluster

The results of parallelization of a 3D boundary element code for simulation of electric fields are presented. The parallelization is based on dynamic load balancing in a heterogeneous workstation cluster running PVM communication software. The parallel efficiency obtained for benchmark problems of different size varies between 74–104%. The highest values of efficiency have been obtained for cases where the I/O-operations could be avoided by distributing data across the cluster. This good efficiency has enabled a significant speed up of the design process without upgrading the existing hardware.