1. Frontiers of Scientific Computing: An Overview
Michael A. Heroux, Padma Raghavan, Horst D. Simon · Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics eBooks · 2006
Scientific computing is a broad discipline focused on using computers as tools for scientific discovery. This book describes the present state and future directions of scientific computing over the next 19 chapters, organized into four main parts. The first part concerns performance modeling, analysis, and optimization. The second focuses on parallel algorithms and software for an array of problems that are common to many modeling and simulation applications. The third part emphasizes tools and environments that can ease and enhance the process of application development. The fourth provides a sampling of applications that require parallel computing for scaling to solve large and realistic models that can advance science and engineering. The final chapter of this volume discusses some current and upcoming challenges and opportunities in parallel scientific computing. In this chapter, we provide an overview of this edited volume on scientific computing, which in broad terms concerns algorithms, their tuned software implementations on advanced computing systems, and their use and evaluation in modeling and simulation applications. Some distinguishing elements of scientific computing are a focus on high performance, an emphasis on scalable parallel algorithms, the development of advanced software tools and environments, and applications to computational modeling and simulation in diverse disciplines. These aspects are covered in the four main parts of the volume (Chapters 2–19). The final chapter, Chapter 20, contains a brief discussion of new and emerging trends and challenges in scientific computing. The remainder of this chapter provides a brief overview of the contents of the book. We discuss each of the four main parts and the chapters within these parts in the order in which they occur.