Nektar plus plus : An open-source spectral/hp element framework

Nektar++ is an open-source software framework designed to support the development of high-performance scalable solvers for partial differential equations using the spectral/hp element method. High-order methods are gaining prominence in several engineering and biomedical applications due to their improved accuracy over low-order techniques at reduced computational cost for a given number of degrees of freedom. However, their proliferation is often limited by their complexity, which makes these methods challenging to implement and use. Nektar++ is an initiative to overcome this limitation by encapsulating the mathematical complexities of the underlying method within an efficient C++ framework, making the techniques more accessible to the broader scientific and industrial communities. The software supports a variety of discretisation techniques and implementation strategies, supporting methods research as well as application-focused computation, and the multi-layered structure of the framework allows the user to embrace as much or as little of the complexity as they need. The libraries capture the mathematical constructs of spectral/hp element methods, while the associated collection of pre-written PDE solvers provides out-of-the-box application-level functionality and a template for users who wish to develop solutions for addressing questions in their own scientific domains. Program summary Program title: Nektar++ Catalogue identifier: AEVV_v1_0 Program summary URL: http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AEVV_v1_0.html Program obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University, Belfast, N. Ireland Licensing provisions: MIT No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 1052456 No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 42851367 Distribution format: tar.gz Programming language: C++. Computer: Any PC workstation or cluster. Operating system: Linux/UNIX, OS X, Microsoft Windows. RAM: 512 MB Classification: 12. External routines: Boost, PFTW, MPI, BLAS, LAPACK and METIS (www.cs.umn.edu) Nature of problem: The Nektar++ framework is designed to enable the discretisation and solution of time-independent or time-dependent partial differential equations. Solution method: Spectral/hp element method Running time: The tests provided take a few minutes to run. Runtime in general depends on mesh size and total integration time. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.