HYPER-SYSTOLIC PROCESSING ON APE100/QUADRICS: n2-LOOP COMPUTATIONS

Abstract

We investigate the performance gains from hyper-systolic implementations of n2-loop problems on the massively parallel computer Quadrics, exploiting its three-dimensional interprocessor connectivity. For illustration we study the communication aspects of an exact molecular dynamics simulation of n particles with Coulomb (or gravitational) interactions. We compare the interprocessor communication costs of the standard-systolic and the hyper-systolic approaches for various granularities. We predict gain factors as large as three on the Q4 and eight on the QH4 and measure actual performances on these machine configurations. We conclude that it appears feasible to investigate the thermodynamics of a full gravitating n-body problem with O(16.000) particles using the new method on a QH4 system.