N-body simulation of galaxy formation on GRAPE-4 special-purpose computer

ABSTRACT

We report on resent N-body simulations of galaxy formation performed on the GRAPE-4 (GRAvity PipE 4) system, a special-purpose computer for astrophysical N-body simulations. We review the astrophysical motivation, the algorithm, the actual performance, and the price per performance. The performance obtained is 332 Gflops averaged over 185 hours for a simulation of a galaxy formation with 786,400 particles. The price per performance obtained is 4,600 dollars per Gflops. The configuration used for the simulation consists of 1,269 pipeline processors and has a peak speed of 663 Gflops.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.1 PROCESSOR ARCHITECTURES
  C.5 COMPUTER SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Measurement, Performance, Theory