Mid Sweden University

Parallel processing in FDTD as well as other electromagnetic simulation methods is growing in importance. It allows not only to calculate faster but also to cope with large structures. Parallel processing can be implemented in different ways. The implementation depends mainly on computer architecture and programming libraries under different operating systems. Usually, different approach has to be taken also for a newly created program in contrary to rebuilding, existing serial program into a parallel version. A European project for development of a parallel version of existing, professional FDTD simulator is presented The simulator was principally designated for serial execution Consecutive steps of code transition from serial into versatile parallel version are described

Fast parallel processing of the FDTD method is becoming very important, and its efficiency on different multiprocessor computer architectures should be carefully examined. Is it possible to have the same versatile parallel FDTD simulator working efficiently on a set of very different computer architectures? In contrast to distributed memory systems, shared memory systems can be built with a variety of memory configuration types (and subtypes) as well as combined with distributed memory systems. The paper focuses on viability of different shared memory architectures for parallel FDTD processing. Our analysis concerns the processing method suitable for both shared and distributed memory systems. The results of experiments comparing parallel processing efficiency on different shared memory machines are presented.