Overview

In a mesh computation:

• Data is based on an N-dimensional grid (N = 1, 2, or 3), with one or more variables per cell (grid point).
• Computation consists of some sequence of the following operations:
  • computing, for each cell, new values for one or more variables, based on old values of variables in that cell and nearby cells (neighbors, next-to-neighbors, etc.)
  • (optionally) reading in values for variables.
  • (optionally) writing out values of variables.
  • (optionally) computing global reductions over the whole grid -- e.g., global maximum or sum of one of the variables.
  (Frequently the compute-new-values and reduction operations are performed repeatedly in a time-step loop.)

Figure 1 illustrates the basic operation -- computing new values in terms of old values -- in a 2-dimensional grid.

  
Figure 1: Basic mesh computation.