Nov. 23, 2007 (Fri) 11:30--12:30, 15:20--16:20 |
Abstract
We overview our GRAPE (GRAvity PipE) and GRAPE-DR project to develop
dedicated computers for astrophysical N-body simulations. The basic idea of GRAPE
is to attach a custom-build computer dedicated to the calculation of gravitational
interaction between particles to a general-purpose programmable computer. By this
hybrid architecture, we can achieve both a wide range of applications and very high
peak performance. GRAPE-6, completed in 2002, achieved the peak speed of 64
Tflops. The next machine, GRAPE-DR, will have the peak speed of 2 Pflops and
will be completed in 2008.
We discuss the physics of stellar systems, evolution of general-purpose highperformance
computers, our GRAPE and GRAPE-DR projects and issues of numerical
algorithms.