[Beowulf] coprocessor to do "physics calculations"

[Florian Haberl]

Hi,

On Friday 05 May 2006 03:24, Bill Broadley wrote:
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 01:09:07PM -0700, Jim Lux wrote:
> > Ran across an interesting device:
> > http://physx.ageia.com/
> >
> > It's some sort of coprocessor (marketed to the gaming community) that
> > looks like its designed to efficiently numerically integrate equations of
> > motion.  Clever idea.  Not much substantive info in the whitepaper.
> > http://physx.ageia.com/whitepaper_avanced_gaming_physics.pdf
>
> Anyone know if it can handle double precision floating point?

could be a nice competition to clearspeed or nec machines (md engine or 
something like this).

It can calculate:

- Density, friction and bounciness
- Newtonian dynamics
- Joints and springs
- Small particle dynamics
- Cloth
- Gravity

So all things around for speeding up molecular dynamics simulations:

- vibrational forces (springs)
- rotational forces (joints)
- nonbonded forces (similar to gravity)
- update position and velocity (dynamics)
- update the neighbour list

For me it is not clear, if i can get the results back out of the graphics 
card.

Also there are some ongoning developments from Havok FX (250GFlops/s 
http://www.havok.com/ ) and something called ATI: DPP-Layer (374GFLOPS/s) The 
Ageia PhysX claimes to reach 20 GFLOPS/s.


Greetings,

Florian

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Florian Haberl                        
 Computer-Chemie-Centrum   
 Universitaet Erlangen/ Nuernberg
 Naegelsbachstr 25
 D-91052 Erlangen
 Mailto: florian.haberl AT chemie.uni-erlangen.de
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