Performance Analysis of Direct N-Body Algorithms on Special-Purpose Supercomputers

Harfst, S, Gualandris, A, Merritt, D, Spurzem, R, Zwart, SP and Berczik, P (2006) Performance Analysis of Direct N-Body Algorithms on Special-Purpose Supercomputers NewAstron., 12. pp. 357-377.

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Abstract

Direct-summation N-body algorithms compute the gravitational interaction between stars in an exact way and have a computational complexity of O(N^2). Performance can be greatly enhanced via the use of special-purpose accelerator boards like the GRAPE-6A. However the memory of the GRAPE boards is limited. Here, we present a performance analysis of direct N-body codes on two parallel supercomputers that incorporate special-purpose boards, allowing as many as four million particles to be integrated. Both computers employ high-speed, Infiniband interconnects to minimize communication overhead, which can otherwise become significant due to the small number of "active" particles at each time step. We find that the computation time scales well with processor number; for 2*10^6 particles, efficiencies greater than 50% and speeds in excess of 2 TFlops are reached.

Item Type:	Article
Authors :	Name Email ORCID Harfst, S Gualandris, A a.gualandris@surrey.ac.uk Merritt, D Spurzem, R Zwart, SP Berczik, P
Date :	5 August 2006
DOI :	10.1016/j.newast.2006.11.003
Uncontrolled Keywords :	astro-ph, astro-ph
Related URLs :	Author Publisher
Depositing User :	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited :	17 May 2017 13:00
Last Modified :	16 Jan 2019 18:39
URI:	http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/id/eprint/837592

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