  The main computing tasks of a finite element code(FE) for solving partial
differential equations (PDE's) are the algebraic system assembly and the
iterative solver. This work focuses on the first task, in the context of a
hybrid MPI+X paradigm. Although we will describe algorithms in the FE context,
a similar strategy can be straightforwardly applied to other discretization
methods, like the finite volume method. The matrix assembly consists of a loop
over the elements of the MPI partition to compute element matrices and
right-hand sides and their assemblies in the local system to each MPI
partition. In a MPI+X hybrid parallelism context, X has consisted traditionally
of loop parallelism using OpenMP. Several strategies have been proposed in the
literature to implement this loop parallelism, like coloring or substructuring
techniques to circumvent the race condition that appears when assembling the
element system into the local system. The main drawback of the first technique
is the decrease of the IPC due to bad spatial locality. The second technique
avoids this issue but requires extensive changes in the implementation, which
can be cumbersome when several element loops should be treated. We propose an
alternative, based on the task parallelism of the element loop using some
extensions to the OpenMP programming model. The taskification of the assembly
solves both aforementioned problems. In addition, dynamic load balance will be
applied using the DLB library, especially efficient in the presence of hybrid
meshes, where the relative costs of the different elements is impossible to
estimate a priori. This paper presents the proposed methodology, its
implementation and its validation through the solution of large computational
mechanics problems up to 16k cores.
