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| Paper: |
Adapting NBODY4 with a GRAPE-6a Supercomputer for Web Access, Using NBodyLab |
| Volume: |
351, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XV |
| Page: |
165 |
| Authors: |
Johnson, V.; Aarseth, S. |
| Abstract: |
A demonstration site has been developed by the authors that enables researchers and students to experiment with the capabilities and performance of NBODY4 running on a GRAPE-6a over the web.
NBODY4 is a sophisticated open-source N-body code for high accuracy simulations of dense stellar systems (Aarseth 2003). In 2004, NBODY4 was successfully tested with a GRAPE-6a, yielding an unprecedented low-cost tool for astrophysical research.
The GRAPE-6a is a supercomputer card developed by astrophysicists to accelerate high accuracy N-body simulations with a cluster or a desktop PC (Fukushige et al. 2005, Makino & Taiji 1998). The GRAPE-6a card became commercially available in 2004, runs at 125 Gflops peak, has a standard PCI interface and costs less than $10,000.
Researchers running the widely used NBODY6 (which does not require GRAPE hardware) can compare their own PC or laptop performance with simulations run on http://www.NbodyLab.org. Such comparisons may help justify acquisition of a GRAPE-6a. For workgroups such as university physics or astronomy departments, the demonstration site may be replicated or serve as a model for a shared computing resource. The site was constructed using an NBodyLab server-side framework. |
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