Apr 272009
I’ve run the first realistic tests of the kind of computation that I am planning to perform on my new machine with the GPU “supercomputer” card. Here is a “before” picture:
Self-gravitating star cluster on the CPU
And now, the exact same program running on the GPU:
Self-gravitating star cluster on the GPU
I’d say that’s quite an improvement. To say the least.
The calculation in this case computed the self-gravitational forces in a cluster of 10,000 stars… it seems that the GPU can perform this computation at least 20 times a second. That’s quite remarkable.
Cool – i have read of super computers designed from PlayStation CPUs but this is the first time i have read of someone using the video GPU for processing.
I tried once to program R. Lol’s Quantum Gravity on Your Desktop (http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0273v2) but my computer could not handle the calculations. If i have the time (and ability) i might try this approach.
A few programming hints and methods would be helpful – if you feel inclined to share.