Computational Steering for Computational Fluid Dynamics

Most computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations require massive computational power, which is usually provided by traditional high-performance computing (HPC) environments. Often, simulations are executed on a massive number of CPU cores (O(1000)) that are hosted in a remote supercomputing center or an in-house supercomputing facility. Due to several limitations of HPC environments, the majority of present CFD simulations are usually executed non-interactively, although interactivity of the simulation process is highly appreciated by scientists and engineers. In this entry, different approaches for interactive CFD simulations are briefly reviewed. As opposed to remote rendering solutions, where data to render is pulled over a connection to remote rendering stations, a recent trend is to harness the parallel computational power of locally available many-core CPUs, graphics processing units (GPUs), or mobile devices for general-purpose applications. Starting from the state of the art in conventional CFD simulations, this entry focuses on hardware resources that are available on the desktop and in the palm of your hand as a basis for computational steering.