Editorial: Algorithmic Aspects of High-Performance Computing for Mechanics and Physics

The development of more powerful and energy-efficient computer architectures is widening the use of large scale high performance computing techniques. Notable increases in computational power are being achieved by many core systems with powerful accelerators such as general-purpose graphics processing units (GP-GPUs). These systems also include more complex hierarchical cache/memory designs which permit to provide the needed data flow required by computing units. These new hardware designs pose a challenge for the implementation and scalability of current simulation algorithms and, at the same time, offer an opportunity for the development of new ones. These trends have motivated the guest editors to organize a series of mini-symposiums in different conferences, to discuss algorithmic aspects of large scale computing. The topics of the mini-symposiums covered new developments in domain decomposition, multigrid, and sparse direct methods, regarding theoretical aspects, practical implementation, and scalability studies. Tailored algorithms for multiphysics problems, e.g., fluid–structure interaction, porous media flows, or MHD, were also welcomed. The mini symposiums, with the same title as the special issue, have been organized at the 11th World Congress in Computational Mechanics (WCCM 2014), held in Barcelona, 20–25 July 2014, the 1st Pan American Congress on Computational Mechanics (PANACM 2015), held in Buenos Aires, 27–29 April 2015, and the 2016 European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences and Engineering (ECCOMAS 2016), held in Crete, June 5–10 2016. To galvanize the success of this series, we have organized this special issue.