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A Highly Parallelized Special-Purpose Computer for Many-Body Simulations with an Arbitrary Central Force: MD-GRAPE
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1996
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Gravitational N‑body simulations spend most of their time computing particle interactions, a task for which specialized hardware such as GRAPE was originally developed, but which requires arbitrary central forces for periodic boundary conditions using Ewald or P³M methods. MD‑GRAPE is a parallel, pipelined special‑purpose computer that works with a general‑purpose front‑end to perform all non‑force calculations while its MD chips compute the forces. It is the first parallel GRAPE capable of arbitrary central forces, accelerates particle‑particle calculations for Ewald and P³M algorithms, and a four‑chip board delivers 4.2 GFLOPS, enabling cosmological N‑body steps in 600 (N/10⁶)³⁄² s for Ewald and 240 (N/10⁶) s for P³M in uniform particle distributions.
view Abstract Citations (25) References (28) Co-Reads Similar Papers Volume Content Graphics Metrics Export Citation NASA/ADS A Highly Parallelized Special-Purpose Computer for Many-Body Simulations with an Arbitrary Central Force: MD-GRAPE Fukushige, Toshiyuki ; Taiji, Makoto ; Makino, Junichiro ; Ebisuzaki, Toshikazu ; Sugimoto, Daiichiro Abstract We have developed a parallel, pipelined special-purpose computer for N-body simulations, MD-GRAPE (for "GRAvity PipE"). In gravitational N- body simulations, almost all computing time is spent on the calculation of interactions between particles. GRAPE is specialized hardware to calculate these interactions. It is used with a general-purpose front-end computer that performs all calculations other than the force calculation. MD-GRAPE is the first parallel GRAPE that can calculate an arbitrary central force. A force different from a pure 1/r potential is necessary for N-body simulations with periodic boundary conditions using the Ewald or particle-particle/particle-mesh (P^3^M) method. MD-GRAPE accelerates the calculation of particle-particle force for these algorithms. An MD- GRAPE board has four MD chips and its peak performance is 4.2 GFLOPS. On an MD-GRAPE board, a cosmological N-body simulation takes 6O0(N/10^6^)^3/2^ s per step for the Ewald method, where N is the number of particles, and would take 24O(N/10^6^) s per step for the P^3^M method, in a uniform distribution of particles. Publication: The Astrophysical Journal Pub Date: September 1996 DOI: 10.1086/177668 Bibcode: 1996ApJ...468...51F Keywords: CELESTIAL MECHANICS; STELLAR DYNAMICS; COSMOLOGY: THEORY; GALAXIES: CLUSTERS: GENERAL; COSMOLOGY: LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE OF UNIVERSE; METHODS: NUMERICAL full text sources ADS |