Porting MADYMO 3D to parallel and vector computers

This paper outlines the strategy and methodology that was used to create a portable coding environment for the commercial package MADYMO. The objectives were to design a global data structure that efficiently utilizes the memory and cache of computers, so that one source code can be used for serial, vector and parallel shared memory computers. This philosophy could also be easily adapted to parallel distributed memory computers. A description is given of the techniques that were used and the problems that were encountered when attempting to vectorize and parallelise the Finite Element module in MADYMO. Special attention was given to the contact search algorithm which has proven to be the most computer intensive part of a crashworthiness simulation Three industrial benchmark applications have been used to test the performance of the code on four computer platforms, Cray T90, Cray J90, SG Power Challenge and the NEC SX-4.