A Comparative Study of the Performance of a CFD program across different L inux Cluster A rchitectures

L inux PC Clusters are a cost effective platform for parallel computational uid dynamics (CFD) applications. In this paper we compare the performance of one CFD application on multiple clusters. Different networking architectures, like channel-bonding and Flat Neighborhood Networks (FNN), that use inexpensive switched Fast E thernet along with one high performance network (Myrinet) are considered in our performance evaluation. T he cost effectiveness and overall performance of the clusters are compared using a large CFD code, L E STool. In this study single processor performance as well as the overall parallel performance using different sized benchmark cases are compared and evaluated to nd the most cost effective parallel platform.