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| Paper: |
A multi-scale approach to simulate the Galaxy |
| Volume: |
470, 370 Years of Astronomy in Utrecht |
| Page: |
353 |
| Authors: |
Portegies Zwart, S. |
| Abstract: |
Simulating an entire galaxy, like the Milky Way, is complicated by the
enormous range in spatial and temporal scales, but also by the
complexity in the wide variety of physics such a simulation will have
to cover. Even after solving these numerical difficulties, the
Galaxy's enormous scale requires fantastic computer resources. These
can in principle be acquired if the simulation can be distributed and
efficiently ported to a wide range of architectures. Computationally
demanding tasks can then be off-loaded to distant supercomputers
whereas embarrassingly parallel tasks can be taken care of by a bunch
of PCs or graphical processing units. We designed the Astronomical
MUltipurpose Software Environment (AMUSE) to enable such complex
simulations. AMUSE is a general-purpose framework for interconnecting
scientific simulation programs using a homogeneous, unified software
interface. The framework is intrinsically parallel, supports
distributed resources and conveniently separates all components in
memory. It performs unit conversion between different modules
automatically and defines common data structures to communicate across
different codes. |
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