Phalanx Documentation

1.0

Index

The Elevator Speech

Phalanx is a local field evaluation kernel specifically designed for general partial differential equation solvers. The main goal of Phalanx is to decompose a complex problem into a number of simpler problems with managed dependencies to support rapid development and extensibility of the PDE code. Through the use of template metaprogramming concepts, Phalanx supports arbitrary user defined data types and evaluation types. This allows for unprecedented flexibility for direct integration with user applications and provides extensive support for embedded technology such as automatic differentiation for sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification.

Overview

Phalanx is a local field evaluation kernel specifically designed for general partial differential equation (PDE) solvers. It can be used with any cell-based discretization techniques including finite element and finite volume. The main goal of Phalanx is to decompose a complex problem into a number of simpler problems with managed dependencies to support rapid development and extensibility of the PDE code. This approach, coupled with the template capabilities of C++ offers a number of unique and powerful capabilities:

Phalanx is a hammer. It's use should be carefully considered. We recommend its use when writing a general PDE framework where one needs support for flexibility in equation sets. It should not be used for simple sets of PDEs where the equations rarely change. There are some drawbacks to using Phalanx that should be considered:

Managing these trade-offs can result in application code that both performs well and supports rapid development and extensibility.

Reporting Bugs and Making Enhancement Requests

To reports bugs or make enhancement requests, visit the Trilinos Bugzilla (Bug Tracking) Database, and use the following instructions.

History

Phalanx grew out of the Variable Manger in the Charon code and the Expression Manager in the Aria code. It is an attempt at merging the two capabilities and is slated to provide nonlinear function evaluation to the Intrepid discretiztion package.

Authors and Contributors

The following have contributed to the design through ideas, discussions, and/or code development of Phalanx:

Copyright

For All Questions and Comments...

Please contact Roger Pawlowski (rppawlo@sandia.gov).

Generated on Thu Dec 17 11:03:13 2009 for Phalanx by  doxygen 1.5.9