Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics: Models, Applications, and Enabling Technologies

We present the results from a two-day study in which we discussed various implementations of Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), one of the leading methods used across a variety of areas of large-scale astrophysical simulations. In particular, we evaluated the suitability of designing special hardware extensions, to further boost the performance of the high-end general purpose computers currently used for those simulations. We considered a range of hybrid architectures, consisting of a mix of custom LSI and reconfigurable logic, combining the extremely high throughput of Special-Purpose Devices (SPDs) with the flexibility of reconfigurable structures, based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The main findings of our workshop consist of a clarification of the decomposition of the computational requirements, together with specific estimates for cost/performance improvements that can be obtained at each stage in this decomposition, by using enabling hardware technology to accelerate the performance of general purpose computers.