Before a calculation can be performed on a parallel computer, it must first be
decomposed into tasks which are assigned to different processors. Efficient use
of the machine requires that each processor have about the same amount of work
to do and that the quantity of interprocessor communication is kept small.
Finding an optimal decomposition is provably hard, but due to its practical
importance, a great deal of effort has been devoted to developing heuristics
for this problem.
The decomposition problem can be addressed in terms of graph partitioning. Rob
Leland and I have developed a variety of algorithms for graph partitioning and
implemented them into a package we call Chaco. The code is being used at most
of the major parallel computing centers around the world to simplify the
development of parallel applications, and to ensure that high performance is
obtained. Chaco has contributed to a wide variety of computational studies
including investigation of the molecular structure of liquid crystals,
evaluating the design of a chemical vapor deposition reactor and modeling
automobile collisions.

WWW:	 http://www.cs.sandia.gov/~bahendr/chaco.html
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Bruce Hendrickson

Note: this port includes a patch provided by Walter Landry for use within MBDyn