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Next: Introduction

Special-Purpose Computer for Gravitational\protect N-body System: GRAPE

Junichiro Makino

Department of System Sciences, University of Tokyo 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan


Abstract:

In this paper I'll briefly overview the GRAPE (GRAvity PipE) project, in which we develop a series of special-purpose computers for stellar dynamics. First, I overview the evolution of high-performance general-purpose computers. It is shown that the ``hardware efficiency'' of general-purpose computers has been going down exponentially, and will continue to do so. Then, I'll describe the approach of building the special-purpose computers as an alternative. I also briefly describe the past of GRAPE project, and the development plan for GRAPE-6, which will provide around 200 Tflops by the year 2000.





Jun Makino
Fri Jun 5 15:55:17 JST 1998