An Optimized, Parallel Computation of the Ghost Layer for Adaptive Hybrid Forest Meshes

TL;DR

This paper presents a modular, optimized parallel algorithm for constructing ghost layers in adaptive, non-conforming forest-of-(oc)trees meshes, improving efficiency and flexibility for parallel mesh-based simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible, low-complexity algorithm for face-ghost construction in adaptive meshes, unifying and optimizing existing approaches.

Findings

Reduces ghost layer construction complexity

Supports arbitrary element shapes and adaptivity

Achieves efficient parallel performance

Abstract

We discuss parallel algorithms to gather topological information about off-process mesh neighbor elements. This information is commonly called the ghost layer, whose creation is a fundamental, necessary task in executing most parallel, element-based computer simulations. Approaches differ in that the ghost layer may either be inherently part of the mesh data structure that is maintained and modified, or kept separate and constructed/deleted as needed. In this work, we present an updated design following the latter approach, which we favor for its modularity of algorithms and data structures. We target arbitrary adaptive, non-conforming forest-of-(oc)trees meshes of mixed element shapes, such as cubes, prisms, and tetrahedra, and restrict ourselves to face-ghosts. Our algorithm has low complexity and redundancy since we reduce it to generic codimension-1 subalgorithms that can be flexibly combined. We cover several existing solutions as special cases and optimize further using recursive, amortized tree searches and traversals.