This project aims at developing the use of parallel scientific computing in our group. The applications for which we are developing parallel codes are direct and large eddy simulation of turbulent flows in hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics and problems related to plasma-waves interaction in fusion devices.

We have build up in January 2001 an 8-node computer ANIC-1. This machine was considered as a prototype. It was a very low cost parallel computer (about 12 000 Euros). The nodes were simple desktop computers with AMD-athlon 900 MHz with 375 Mb memory connected through a very standard 16 port 3com switch.

We have build up in January 2002 a 32-node computer ANIC-2, which is our first parallel production computer. Based on a diskless configuration, each node has a Pentium IV processor and 1.5 Gb of memory. Communications are, like for ANIC-1, based on the fast ethernet technology. With an agregate memory of 48 Gb, ANIC-2 allows fairly large computations. For instance, some incompressible MHD flows with up to 2 10⁸ have been computed on this facility.