Teraflop per second gravitational lensing ray-shooting using graphics processing units
Abstract
Gravitational lensing calculation using a direct inverse ray-shooting approach is a computationally expensive way to determine magnification maps, caustic patterns, and light-curves (e.g. as a function of source profile and size). However, as an easily parallelisable calculation, gravitational ray-shooting can be accelerated using programmable graphics processing units (GPUs). We present our implementation of inverse ray-shooting for the NVIDIA G80 generation of graphics processors using the NVIDIA Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) software development kit. We also extend our code to multiple-GPU systems, including a 4-GPU NVIDIA S1070 Tesla unit. We achieve sustained processing performance of 182 Gflop/s on a single GPU, and 1.28 Tflop/s using the Tesla unit. We demonstrate that billion-lens microlensing simulations can be run on a single computer with a Tesla unit in timescales of order a day without the use of a hierarchical tree code.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0905.2453,
title = {Teraflop per second gravitational lensing ray-shooting using graphics processing units},
author = {Alexander C. Thompson and Christopher J. Fluke and David G. Barnes and Benjamin R. Barsdell},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0905.2453},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
21 pages, 4 figures, submitted to New Astronomy