N-Body Gravitational Simulations
Format
SOECS Senior Project Demonstration
Faculty Mentor Name
Jinzhu Gao
Faculty Mentor Department
Computer Science
Additional Faculty Mentor Name
Keisuke Juge
Additional Faculty Mentor Name
James Hetrick
Abstract/Artist Statement
N-Body simulations are a common method of modeling the interacting behavior between objects from the atomic scale to the astronomical scale. This simulation models the effects of the Newtonian gravitational forces between objects on a galactic scale. Simulations of this kind are important in understanding physical systems which cannot be solved analytically. In order to model a realistic system using an n-body simulation usually many bodies must be simulated which increases the computation time significantly. My project was designed around finding design methods of both software and hardware which could be used to increase the speed at which a large n-body system could be run. These methods included a parallel cluster system, a GPU architecture, a parallel application written in MPI and CUDA and a clustering algorithm design. The application will run in in a scalable format which will allow it to be expanded to run on larger clusters than the one I have put together. The simulated runs will be visualized. The architecture and software hold the potential for galaxy-scale simulations as well as galaxy collision simulations if it can be run on a sufficiently large machine.
Location
School of Engineering & Computer Science
Start Date
27-4-2013 2:00 PM
End Date
27-4-2013 3:30 PM
N-Body Gravitational Simulations
School of Engineering & Computer Science
N-Body simulations are a common method of modeling the interacting behavior between objects from the atomic scale to the astronomical scale. This simulation models the effects of the Newtonian gravitational forces between objects on a galactic scale. Simulations of this kind are important in understanding physical systems which cannot be solved analytically. In order to model a realistic system using an n-body simulation usually many bodies must be simulated which increases the computation time significantly. My project was designed around finding design methods of both software and hardware which could be used to increase the speed at which a large n-body system could be run. These methods included a parallel cluster system, a GPU architecture, a parallel application written in MPI and CUDA and a clustering algorithm design. The application will run in in a scalable format which will allow it to be expanded to run on larger clusters than the one I have put together. The simulated runs will be visualized. The architecture and software hold the potential for galaxy-scale simulations as well as galaxy collision simulations if it can be run on a sufficiently large machine.