Shams, RamtinSadeghi, Parastoo2015-12-100743-7315http://hdl.handle.net/1885/60621A model for the computational cost of the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method irrespective of implementation details or the application domain is given. The model is used to formalize the problem of optimal distribution of computational load to an arbitrary set of resources across a heterogeneous cluster. We show that the problem can be formulated as a minimax optimization problem and derive analytic lower bounds for the computational cost. The work provides insight into optimal design of FDTD parallel software. Our formulation of the load distribution problem takes simultaneously into account the computational and communication costs. We demonstrate that significant performance gains, as much as 75%, can be achieved by proper load distribution.Keywords: Application domains; Communication cost; Computational costs; Computational loads; Finite difference time-domain; Gpu clusters; Graphics Processing Unit (GPU); Heterogeneous clusters; Heterogeneous computing; Load distributions; Lower bounds; Minimax opti Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD); Graphics Processing Unit (GPU); Heterogeneous computing; Optimization; Parallel processing201010.1016/j.jpdc.2010.10.0112016-02-24