Related papers: Supercomputing and stellar dynamics
The modern study of the dynamics of stellar systems requires the use of high-performance computers. Indeed, an accurate modelization of the structure and evolution of self-gravitating systems like planetary systems, open clusters, globular…
In recent years, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has emerged as a low-cost alternative for high performance computing, enabling impressive speed-ups for a range of scientific computing applications. Early adopters in astronomy are…
Astronomers have come to rely on the increasing performance of computers to reduce, analyze, simulate and visualize their data. In this environment, faster computation can mean more science outcomes or the opening up of new parameter spaces…
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) can speed up the numerical solution of various problems in astrophysics including the dynamical evolution of stellar systems; the performance gain can be more than a factor 100 compared to using a Central…
Graphics processing units (GPUs) are recently being used to an increasing degree for general computational purposes. This development is motivated by their theoretical peak performance, which significantly exceeds that of broadly available…
Upcoming and future astronomy research facilities will systematically generate terabyte-sized data sets moving astronomy into the Petascale data era. While such facilities will provide astronomers with unprecedented levels of accuracy and…
Cosmological measurements require the calculation of nontrivial quantities over large datasets. The next generation of survey telescopes (such as DES, PanSTARRS, and LSST) will yield measurements of billions of galaxies. The scale of these…
I first comment on some recent advances in computing equipment for CPU-intensive numerical simulations, and on possible developments in the near future. I then discuss some particularly important and yet unsolved problems in dynamics and…
General purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is dramatically changing the landscape of high performance computing in astronomy. In this paper, we identify and investigate several key decision areas, with a goal of…
Certain problems in the field of stellar atmospheres, polarized radiative transfer and magnetic field diagnostics cannot be addressed by means of traditional sequential programming techniques because CPU times become prohibitive on even the…
High performance computing numerical simulations are today one of the more effective instruments to implement and study new theoretical models, and they are mandatory during the preparatory phase and operational phase of any scientific…
Astronomy depends on ever increasing computing power. Processor clock-rates have plateaued, and increased performance is now appearing in the form of additional processor cores on a single chip. This poses significant challenges to the…
A previous study of MD algorithms designed for GPU use is extended to cover more recent developments in GPU architecture. Algorithm modifications are described, together with extensions to more complex systems. New measurements include the…
This paper discusses the potential of graphics processing units (GPUs) in high-dimensional optimization problems. A single GPU card with hundreds of arithmetic cores can be inserted in a personal computer and dramatically accelerates many…
Design considerations for molecular dynamics algorithms capable of taking advantage of the computational power of a graphics processing unit (GPU) are described. Accommodating the constraints of scalable streaming-multiprocessor hardware…
The simulation of rich star clusters presents challenging problems of several kinds, including the design of suitable hardware and software, and numerous theoretical problems in stellar dynamics and stellar physics. Great progress has been…
I compare various popular and unpopular techniques for simulating large collisionless stellar systems. I give a quantitative comparison of the raw cpu times required for five separate codes, including tree codes and basis function…
Molecular dynamics facilitates the simulation of a complex system to be analyzed at molecular and atomic levels. Simulations can last a long period of time, even months. Due to this cause the graphics processing units (GPUs) and multi-core…
Parallel computing has turned out to be the enabling technology to solve complex physical systems. However, the transition from shared memory, vector computers to massively parallel, distributed memory systems and, recently, to hybrid…
In this work, we have explored the advantages and drawbacks of using GPUs instead of CPUs in the calculation of a standard 2-point correlation function algorithm, which is useful for the analysis of Large Scale Structure of galaxies. Taking…