GRAPE-2A: a special purpose computer for simulations of many-body systems with arbitrary central force

Author

Ebisuzaki, Toshikazu ; Ito, Tomoyoshi ; Makino, Junichiro ; Okumura, Sachiko K. ; Sugimo, Daiichiro

Author_Institution

Dept. of Earth Sci. & Astron., Tokyo Univ., Japan

Volume

i

fYear

1992

fDate

7-10 Jan 1992

Firstpage

171

Abstract

The authors are developing GRAPE-2A which is a back-end processor to accelerate the simulations of many-body systems such as stellar clusters and systems of molecules. GRAPE-2A calculates forces exerted on one particle from all other particles. The host computer, connected to GRAPE-2A through a VME bus, performs other calculations such as time integration. In the simulation of many-body systems, almost all computation time is consumed in the calculation of forces between particles, i.e. gravitational, Coulomb, and van der Waals forces. GRAPE-2A can calculate the forces with an arbitrary functional form using a hardwired pipeline. The host computer can set the functional form of the force by sending the interpolation data to GRAPE-2A. The computational speed of GRAPE-2A is 300 MFLOPS. Aiming at a speed of 1 TFLOPS, the authors are planning to develop a GRAPE system in which many GRAPE pipelines work in parallel

Keywords

N-body problems; astronomy computing; astrophysical fluid dynamics; digital simulation; galaxies; integration; intermolecular mechanics; interpolation; molecular clusters; parallel machines; physics computing; pipeline processing; special purpose computers; stellar dynamics; 300 MFLOPS; Coulomb forces; GRAPE-2A; Gravity Pipe; arbitrary central force; back-end processor; gravitational forces; hardwired pipeline; interpolation data; many-body systems; molecular systems; simulations; special purpose computer; stellar clusters; time integration; van der Waals forces; Acceleration; Computational modeling; Computer simulation; Costs; Gravity; Indium tin oxide; Pipelines; Plasma simulation; Proteins; Thermal force;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Sciences, 1992. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Hawaii International Conference on

Conference_Location

Kauai, HI

Print_ISBN

0-8186-2420-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HICSS.1992.183159

Filename

183159