Terminology

This page is an attempt to try to agree on a standard lexicon for the DGSWEM/LGD/HPX code. Every project ends up developing its own lexicon, and this project is the convergence of three totally separate projects. This has led to some terms being ambiguous due to having multiple definitions. On the other hand, other things are described by multiple terms.

The first goal will be just to catalog all of the different terms in use now, their origins, and exact definitions. Later, we may decide to try to standardize the lexicon in order to facilitate communication.

• submesh: AKA subdomain, partition, rank. A portion of the spatially-decomposed compute mesh, generated by ADCPREP. In the MPI version of DGSWEM, the number of submeshes was always equal to the number of MPI ranks, leading to the two terms being used interchangeably.

• subdomain (deprecated): See submesh.

• node: Depending on context, refers either to a "compute node" or a vertex of the mesh.

• cell: In LibGeoDecomp, the smallest unit of computation in the unstructured mesh. In DGSWEM/LGD/HPX, it is equivalent to a submesh.