COMPUTING APPLICATIONS

The main three specific features of high performance scientific simulation consist of obtaining optimal performance levels, sustainability of the codes and models and the use of dedicated architectures. The construction of codes and of the physical phenomena to be simulated requires substantial investments both in terms of human resources and of the experiments required to validate the models. The need for increasingly refined modeling leads to optimization of the performance levels of the codes to obtain simulation results within acceptable calculation times. Finally, the necessary recourse to highly specialized hardware resources adds further constraints to the programming of such software, especially when the lifetime of the codes, often close to 20 years, is compared to that of super computers, in the order of just 4 years. The MDA approach (Model Driven Architecture), standardized by the OMG (Object Management Group) and based on UML 2.0, provides among things a generic method for obtaining a runnable code from a UML (Unified Modeling Language) model describing a system on several levels of modeling. Its various abstraction mechanisms should make i