PANACEA user's manual for PANACEA Version 2. 0
S.A. Brown, D. Braddy · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1993
A numerical simulation code is fundamentally a device to solve an initial value problem. Very often these programs are written starting with the routines that solve some system of equations. Unless care is taken to formulate these routines with regard to a host of issues (e.g., data flow), it can be very awkward to set up a problem or to look at the answers that the code returns. Furthermore, it can be nearly impossible to take advantage of some of the excellent work that various groups have done (e.g., equation solver packages) because the data flow and structuring issues have not been given sufficient attention in the program design stages. One way to avoid some of these difficulties is to write the data flow controls, the I/O mechanisms, and the database manager first. With these parts in place, there is a great deal of guidance for building the parts of a simulation code that deal with the specific set of equations to be solved; thus initial value data is fed in and the solution is written out clearly and conveniently. Furthermore, this approach provides a basis for defining some conventions to allow the sharing of simulation modules. It also helpsmore » isolate the machine dependencies of a code in a very few places, which greatly enhances the portability of the code. PANACEA is a library of routines built to address these issues. In essence, PANACEA attempts to embody all of the functionality of a numerical simulation code, which is generic to all simulation codes. It accomplishes this by implementing a model of the simulation as a system of services (routines), which are bound together with the simulation specific routines provided by the code developer. One useful result of this approach is that it effectively imposes a discipline for the development of simulation codes that promote shareability, portability, and inter-operability.« less