Application of microprocessor networks for the solution of diffusion equation

The availibility of low cost microprocessors, memories and ancilliary circuits has made the construction of large networks of such devices feasible where each microcomputer is dedicated to a specific task. The parallel computation of the diffusion equation is a particular application of such a multi-microcomputer network where each microcomputer simulates a given region and exchanges partial results with its neighbours. Structure of a network where each node consists of a microcomputer linked to other nodes by means of serial communication lines is described. The explicit finite difference algorithm is adapted for an 8-bit architecture most commonly available today. The algorithm is emulated on a minicomputer and the results presented. Availibility of processing power and memory at each node is significant for the simulation of non-linear problems which has been discussed. The significance of full parallelism where a microcomputer is allocated to each problem node and partial parallelism where a microcomputer simulates a number of nodes which form a region is covered.