Read Me
Finita :: http://finita.sourceforge.net/
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What's in this distribution?
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This is the self-contained Windows distribution of Finita, a package for solving
complex PDE/algebraic systems of equations numerically using grid methods.
What is Finita?
---------------
Finita is package for solving complex PDE/algebraic systems of equations
numerically using grid methods.
Contrary to its closest counterparts, FreeFEM++ and FlexPDE, Finita is
essentially a C source code generator in that instead of solving the problems
directly it generates a C program which is to perform the actual computations.
Finita can currently solve one, two and three -dimensional real and complex
problems on regular grids.
Finita generates either sequental or parallel codes at user's discretion and
makes use of a few widespread high performance (non)linear solvers such as
SuperLU, MUMPS, PETSc etc. User-supplied code is mostly
The auto-generated C source code is highly portable and can be compiled with an
ANSI C compiler on a wide array of systems ranging from Windows workstations to
non-x86 high peformance *NIX clusters with no source code modification.
How to use it?
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At user level Finita provides the command-line driver finitac which processes
the user-supplied problem description and generates the C source code. The
Windows installer can augment system-wide path with the directory containing the
finitac executable which can be then called from within command-line shell,
makefiles etc.
The finitac invokation is as follows:
> finitac problem.rb
where problem.rb is the problem description file.
On successful execution the finitac yields a set of C source files and a C
header file which are when accompatied by the hand-crafted C driver constitute a
program for solving the respective problem.
Anything else for Windows users?
--------------------------------
Since Finita is a source code generator, it has no inherent capability to
produce the executables hence external C compiler and libraries are needed. There
is a compation project WHPC which provides a complete self-contained environment
for compiling and running the high performance numeric codes on 32 and 64 bit
Windows. Being an independent project it is however designed with Finita in
mind: WHPC and Finita together constitute a complete build and run environment
on Windows for both sequential and parallel execution.
WHPC home page is: http://whpc.sourceforge.net/
Any samples?
------------
A few working examples can be found in the \sample subdirectory of the
installation.
Provided that both Finita and WHPC are successfully installed on the system the
instruction for building a sample Cavity problem employing sequential debugging
version of MUMPS linear solver is as follows:
1) Generate C source code cavity.auto.h and cavity.auto1.c
> finitac cavity.rb
2) Build executable cavity.exe
> %CC% -g -o cavity %MUMPS_DSO_CPPFLAGS% cavity.c cavity.auto1.c %MUMPS_DSO_LDFLAGS% %MUMPS_DSO_LDLIBS%
3) Perform a test run
> cavity.exe
This will result in a few .dat files containing computed physical fields.
For more information on WHPC refer to the respective documentation.
3rd parties?
-----------
This installation ships an unmodified Ruby runtime from the RubyInstaller
project. The installer itself is built by the Inno Setup distribution generator.
RubyInstaller home page: http://rubyinstaller.org/ Inno Setup home page:
http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php/
THE END
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That's all for now, folks. Happy number crunching!
Oleg A. Khlybov <fougas@mail.ru>