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Simulating Galaxies With Supercomputers

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the delete-the-pool-ladder-quick dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Over in the UK Durham University is tasking its supercomputing cluster with nothing less than recreating how galaxies are born and evolve over the course of billions of years. Even with 800 AMD processor cores at its disposal the university is still hitting the limits of what is possible."

120 comments

  1. Should have... by americamatrix · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    used 800 Intel cores ;)

    1. Re:Should have... by toastar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      800 cores.... that's like 134 CPU's, With 4 CPU's per node, it's only 34 Nodes. A rack holds 48u.

      So they have a problem that takes more then one rack of modern computers to handle?

    2. Re:Should have... by guruevi · · Score: 1

      That's what I was thinking. The University I work for has not just one but 3 clusters with 2 of them having 4,096 CPU cores and 848 CPU cores

      --
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    3. Re:Should have... by AnonGCB · · Score: 1

      Do you mean 4096 CPU cores and 848 actual CPUs?

      --
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    4. Re:Should have... by An+ominous+Cow+art · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is nothing. For my kindergarten thesis, I used galaxies to simulate supercomputers.

    5. Re:Should have... by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      Its like to to be far more realistic since its based on the real physics of the universe, rather than the simulations which are based on simulations of made up rules for the universe.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    6. Re:Should have... by jgagnon · · Score: 1

      More likely he meant one had 4096 cores and another had 848 cores.

      --
      Remember to maintain your supply of /facepalm oil to prevent chafing.
    7. Re:Should have... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      They should have talked to SuperMicro.
      That's just over 8 enclosures (4 nodes/enclosure) and fits in 18U.

      It looks like this.

    8. Re:Should have... by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Even better, this:

      http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/pedge_m1000e/pd.aspx?refid=pedge_m1000e&s=biz&cs=555

      4 of those maxed out gives you near the same capacity. 16 slots * 12 cores per slot * 4 enclosures = 768 cores

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    9. Re:Should have... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And they let one postdoc use the whole thing for years at a time, or do they force everyone to share?

  2. Simulating Galexies sure... by Meskarune · · Score: -1, Redundant

    but does it run linux?

    --
    cat /dev/head >> post
    1. Re:Simulating Galexies sure... by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 1

      but does it run linux?

      guess it doesnt run windows, though I would like to see the processor graphs of a 800 core machine in the Task Scheduler

    2. Re:Simulating Galexies sure... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An 800 core machine is almost enough to run Vista.

    3. Re:Simulating Galexies sure... by MrHanky · · Score: 1

      It runs on storks.

    4. Re:Simulating Galexies sure... by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 1

      the task manager alone would take up a few dozen cores

  3. can it run crysis 2? by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: -1, Redundant

    can it run crysis 2?

    1. Re:can it run crysis 2? by Antisyzygy · · Score: 1

      It could probably run crysis 2 on a hundred virtual machines at the same time.

      --
      That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
    2. Re:can it run crysis 2? by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 1

      not necessarily, 100 VM's means 8 Cores and 16GB RAM per VM.
      assuming that these cores are not equivalent to Atom cores, but something faster, it still doesnt say anything about the graphics hardware

    3. Re:can it run crysis 2? by Antisyzygy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      8 cores = 2-3 cores + 4 GB for the game's cpu and memory requirements and 5-6 cores + 12 GB to model a GPU with dedicated memory access. Not sure if GPU modelling has ever been done before, but I bet its possible with that much cpu access and memory. Games used to run with software graphics acceleration back when I was in grade school. I remember I bought my first dedicated graphics card back in the Voodoo 3 days and could start selecting "Hardware Acceleration" in PC games.

      --
      That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
    4. Re:can it run crysis 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It could probably run crysis 2 on a hundred virtual machines at the same time.

      Or Aero.

    5. Re:can it run crysis 2? by pipatron · · Score: 1

      You seem to forget that emulating a modern GPU would require somewhat up to a hundred cores from a generic CPU. This is why they exist as a separate component.

      --
      c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
    6. Re:can it run crysis 2? by Toonol · · Score: 1

      You seem to forget that emulating a modern GPU would require somewhat up to a hundred cores from a generic CPU.

      I don't believe that at all; it sounds like marketing-speak. Intel's using, what, eight CPUs to do real-time RAY TRACING, and that's MORE demanding than the rasterizering paradigm that modern GPUs are based on. Certainly a GPU is more specialized and efficient than a similar-scale general purpose CPU, but I think the performance ratio is closer to 4::1 than 100::1.

    7. Re:can it run crysis 2? by sleeping143 · · Score: 1

      Actually, comparing FLOPS, about 10 Core i7 980 XE (107 GFLOPS) processors could handle the work of a GTX 285 (1062 GFLOPS). Add another one to orchestrate the whole mess, and you should be good to go. Of course, your latency will most likely be significantly increased...

    8. Re:can it run crysis 2? by Ironhandx · · Score: 1

      IIRC those CPUs have some GPU components built into the die which is why that is possible. In a straight competition on most normal GFX rendering type equations the actual is closer to the 100:1 than 4:1.

      Please correct me if I'm wrong. However it very much depends on the equations. There are things that GPUs can do but are bad at and things they can't do at all.

      Either way having a good setup to make use of the strengths of both types of processor is going to be the optimal solution.

    9. Re:can it run crysis 2? by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      I don't believe that at all; it sounds like marketing-speak. Intel's using, what, eight CPUs to do real-time RAY TRACING, and that's MORE demanding than the rasterizering paradigm that modern GPUs are based on. Certainly a GPU is more specialized and efficient than a similar-scale general purpose CPU, but I think the performance ratio is closer to 4::1 than 100::1.

      It's all in the design. (YAY! Car analogy time)

      You have to transport 1,000 people from NY to Miami faster than another person. Complete the challenge and win $10M. There are two vehicles, you pick first:

      2 seat Ferrari
      40 seat Bus

      GPUs DO get a boost from things like just having to worry about processing graphics as opposed to managing the computer, but they get a MUCH bigger boost due to the fact that they are optimized to do certain tasks very quickly.

      The Bus is designed to move a lot of people, the Ferrari is designed to move 1 or two people very quickly, and you can easily argue that the Ferrari is the much more powerful, advanced, carefully engineered design. The Ray Tracing activity is a bit like taking the Ferarri engine out and using it to power a pump and then taking the bus engine out and using it as well. Neither were really designed to do that, so it doesn't really work as a good comparison.

      There is a reason why it was hard to emulate something like the Playstation for a long time even though computer processors were orders of magnitude more powerful than the one in the original Playstation.

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    10. Re:can it run crysis 2? by pipatron · · Score: 1

      You can think about whatever ratio that makes you happy, that doesn't change actual ratios shown when implementing algorithms in the GPU vs a general purpose CPU. A GPU does hundreds of very simple calculations in parallel, the CPU doesn't, it's quite simple.

      --
      c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
  4. Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about using a galaxy model for an @home project and ask for extra CPUs/GPUs?

    1. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was thinking the same thing but maybe this project won't break down into nice little chunks for us to work on at home?

    2. Re:Well... by Bootsy+Collins · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's correct. In a simulation like this, the most important physical effect to model is gravity. Gravity doesn't have a range. For each timestep in the simulation, all the mass in the simulation has to interact with all the other mass in the simulation. There are a variety of numerical tricks that people who write these codes use to make the problem feasible, so that the computation time required doesn't scale as N^2, with N = number of particles in the simulation. But even with these tricks, to calculate the force on an individual particle, you still have to care about the stuff outside your local volume. These are problems you have to solve when you parallelize your code. Distributing the problem in an @home fashion would require so much inter-participant communication that at this point, it wouldn't really be practical.

    3. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the nodes are evenly distributed like a galaxy you can use that to your advantage.
      The gravity affect on one node can be worked out from the distribution of other nodes.

    4. Re:Well... by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      Gravity doesn't have a range.

      That's a rather 'tricky' statement don't you think? First, I'll agree with you in that gravity doesn't technically reach zero. But it does appear to have to propagate. In a system many thousand of lightyears across, propagation delay would be significant.

      Not only that, but wouldn't the galaxy have expanded several million, if not billions of miles in the 27,000 years it would take for light to travel from one end to the other? (I'm not trusting my back of the envelope calcuations which put it at expanding 500 billion miles over 27,000 years)

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    5. Re:Well... by Bootsy+Collins · · Score: 1

      Gravity doesn't have a range.

      That's a rather 'tricky' statement don't you think? First, I'll agree with you in that gravity doesn't technically reach zero. But it does appear to have to propagate. In a system many thousand of lightyears across, propagation delay would be significant.

      I'm not sure how this makes my statement about gravity not having a range "tricky"; but it's definitely something worth thinking about. Several thousand lightyears is actually a pretty small-scale simulation; the simulation volume wouldn't be large enough to contain a typical bright galaxy. Cosmological simulations incorporating galaxy formation typically use volumes tens or even hundreds of megaparsecs (Mpc) on a side. Imagine you're working with a 100 Mpc per-side cube (for the cognoscenti: taking h=1 because I don't feel like carrying notation around). You typically use periodic boundary conditions, so the furthest mass from you is 50 Mpc away. Light travels at about 300 Mpc/Gyr; so it'll take about 1/6 Gyr for changes in the distribution of sources of the gravitational field to impact the field halfway across the box. That's a long time. So you might imagine that this is a major issue.

      However, in one of these simulations, when evaluating the gravitational potential at the location of a point mass of interest, it's the stuff out at the largest scales that's treated in the most simplistic fashion -- that's how they avoid having to calculate pair forces between all the point masses in the simulation, which would make the computational time scale as N^2. Generally, you do some simplistic calculation of the gravitational potential at the point mass of interest, using a simplification of the mass distribution at large scales, and then calculate pair forces between the point mass of interest and others very nearby as a correction to the simplistic calculation. This simplification introduces error; but the folks who work on this are generally careful to set it up so that the error introduced is small enough to be acceptable (how they do that and can feel pretty confident about it would have to be another post), given that simplifications like this permit you to do the simulation in the first place. So, to my point mass of interest, the distant stuff 50 Mpc away is represented at low resolution. Typical peculiar velocities of masses in intergalactic space are 500 km/s and under, often well under. 500km/s is about 0.5 Mpc/Gyr. So in that delay time of 1/6 Gyr we were talking about earlier, distant stuff will have typically moved under 100 kpc. Compared to how we simplify the mass distribution at large distances to make the problem computationally tractable, that's nothing. There are some simulations where you have to care about this; but in general, ignoring it doesn't introduce as much error as you might think.

      Incidentally, this kind of simplification helps parallelization quite a bit. If volumes of the simulation are allocated to nodes of a cluster, two nodes considering portions of the simulation volume which are very distant from each other may care about little more than the total mass in the other node's volume and where the center of mass of that stuff is located.

      Not only that, but wouldn't the galaxy have expanded several million, if not billions of miles in the 27,000 years it would take for light to travel from one end to the other? (I'm not trusting my back of the envelope calcuations which put it at expanding 500 billion miles over 27,000 years)

      This is only a significant effect for separations that are not small compared to the size of the theoretical horizon. And at any rate, it's straightforward to consider. The simulations are done in comoving coordinates (that is, coordinates that expand with the expansion). Working in comoving coordinates introduces some powers of the scale factor (well, inverse factors typically) that you have to include in the equations you solve; but that's OK.

    6. Re:Well... by arisvega · · Score: 1

      In a simulation like this, the most important physical effect to model is gravity.

      No, it's not. Or it is. Actually, you can't say until you run it and compare the results with other setups and, better yet, with what you see in the Cosmos.

      Imagine that every galaxy is, more or less, surrounded by all the others- thus, unless you have superclusters in proximity gravity cancels out. Seen as a system with components, though, the gravitational interactions between individual stars (from which the shape of the galaxy emerges from) are important. Yet, forces such as e/m might be mild, but operating over big timescales may greately influence the outcome- imagine that the whole thing is turbulance-driven; i.e. only a small fraction of matter/energy of the universe 'settles' into stars, planets, iPods and lolcatz (that's due to gravity); the rest is running loose in the wild, and plays a catalytic -if I may- role finetuning the rest of the picture.

      To explain the former better, accounting for plasma flows (a very resource-hungry problem) can give one an idea on the fraction of the material that is being ejected back to the system. Again, one may ignore some interactions (for speed's sake) and compare results with others and the Cosmos; depending of the problem one could say that gravity is the most important, but that is not always the case.

      --
      The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
  5. 800 AMD processor cores by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 3, Interesting

    800 AMD processor cores, that knowledge is useless, need more info regarding that, are they ultra low power ones like Atom/Bobcat, or extremely high clocked, such as the i7 980x/ Phenom x6 1090,etc

    Also article says that they have 1600GB RAM, isnt RAM normally in powers of 2?

    1. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2GB per core?

    2. Re:800 AMD processor cores by blueg3 · · Score: 1

      Key to puzzling this out: it's a computing cluster, and 800 isn't a power of 2 either.

    3. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Antisyzygy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Id guess they are running Opteron cpu's, maybe up to 8 core. So that means 50-100 machines in a cluster. 1600 / 50 = 32 gb per machine OR 1600/ 100 = 16 gb per machine.

      --
      That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
    4. Re:800 AMD processor cores by gerddie · · Score: 1

      How about 100 nodes of 2x Phenom x4 @16GB?

    5. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Antisyzygy · · Score: 1

      Id guess they are running Opteron cpu's, maybe up to 8 core. So that means 50-100 machines in a cluster. 1600 / 50 = 32 gb per machine OR 1600/ 100 = 16 gb per machine.

      And that does not preclude them using Dual Socket MoBo's with two - 4 core Opterons.

      --
      That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
    6. Re:800 AMD processor cores by rubycodez · · Score: 3, Informative

      mostly opteron 175 (528 of them at 2.2 GHz with 1056GB RAM totl) and 285 (256 of them at 2.6GHz with 512GB RAM tota), so about 2GB RAM each.

      they run Solaris 10 u3

      http://icc.dur.ac.uk/icc.php?content=Computing/Cosma

    7. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      they run Solaris

      No wonder the computers are too slow. *ducks*

    8. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Details are here:
      http://icc.dur.ac.uk/icc.php?content=Computing/Cosma

      The Cosmology Machine (COSMA) was first switched on in July 2001. From the original system only 2 TByte of dataspace is still on line. 64 SunBlade 1000s with a total of 64 GByte of RAM were donated by the ICC in February 2006 to the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology in Kigali, the Capital of Rwanda. Sun Microsystems payed for their transport by air.

      In February 2004, QUINTOR was installed. QUINTOR consists of a 256 SunFire V210s with a total of 512 UltraSparc IIIi 1 GHz processors and 576 GByte of RAM. The systems have recently been upgraded to Solaris 10 u3, the Studio 12 compilers are the default and the Sun HPC - CT7 is used for parallel MPI applications. CT7 is Sun's packaging for Open MPI 1.2.x
      In April 2006, OCTOR was installed. OCTOR consists of

            1. Cordelia, a 264 X2100 node cluster with a total of
                          * 528 2.2 GHz AMD Opteron cores (AMD Opteron 175)
                          * 1056 GByte of RAM
                          * connected via dual gigabit over Nortel 5510 Switches
            2. Miranda, a 64 X4100 node cluster with a total of
                          * 256 2.6 GHz AMD Opteron cores (AMD Opteron 285)
                          * 512 GByte of RAM
                          * connected via gigabit for system services
                          * connected via Myrinet 2000 F cards for HPC communications
            3. Oberon, a V40z with a total of
                          * 8 2.2 GHz AMD Opteron cores (AMD Opteron 875)
                          * 32 GByte of RAM
                  Oberon is the head node of OCTOR.

              Octor
      The systems are running Solaris 10 x86/64, the Studio12 compilers are default, but Studio11 and Studio10 are still available. Sun HPC - CT7 is used for parallel MPI applications.

      In September 2007, we received rosalind, a V890 with 8 1.5 GHZ Ultra Sparc VI+ cores and 64 GByte of RAM. This was a donation by Sun Microsystems, which is gratefully acknowledged. Rosalind is running Solaris 10_u4, the Studio12 compilers and Sun HPC - CT7. This system has the role to provide access to single large memory and to packages such as IDL.

    9. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

      The mystery is solved. Their cluster is old and slow,

    10. Re:800 AMD processor cores by PhunkySchtuff · · Score: 1

      1600GB RAM = 2GB RAM per core. That's a power of 2.

      --
      Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
    11. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      8192 x 2 ?

    12. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1600GB/800 processors = 2GB per processor

    13. Re:800 AMD processor cores by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      a school isn't going to dump their supercomputer in the garbage every three years like a PC gamer. heck it probably took a year to get hardware project proposed and approved.

      funny how many here assumed it would be an octo-core monster. instead we find hardware a few years old is actually useful.

    14. Re:800 AMD processor cores by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

      Perhaps they're angling for another grant.

      Dr Lydia Heck, the ICC's computer cluster manager, said the ICC had maxed out its supercomputing cluster's processors and memory by running a simulation of the effect of dark matter on how galaxies are formed.

      And the maxed-out cluster is not even using large scale models.

      Physicists have to simplify the cosmological models they use in order to get ones that produce data sets small enough to be accurately processed by the 64-bit chips in the supercomputing cluster, and which can fit into the cluster's available memory.

  6. Easier way by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Funny

    They should have asked The Doctor to simply record the event when he re-booted the Universe.

    1. Re:Easier way by click2005 · · Score: 1

      The BBC did already did. Lets just hope they dont overwrite the tapes.

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    2. Re:Easier way by gamecrusader · · Score: 1

      no we just need the doctor to loan us the TARDIS and scientist could learn how the universe started and how we aren't alone maybe even about the threats to our the planets including the Daleks, Cybermen, and the real policemen of the universe the Judoon the r real enforcers of the universe

    3. Re:Easier way by ElderKorean · · Score: 1

      Just find where the MiB storage is - 'the galaxy is in Orion's belt' - not really a simulation though but an actual galaxy.

    4. Re:Easier way by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      Yeah but a single Galaxy is nothing compared to the Universe.

  7. Old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People have been doing this for ages...what is the news here?

  8. Gaaahhhh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Let's simulate a single cell, then an organism, then aging. Then we can start extending our lifespan. THEN we can start living, not just this handful of years between being a powerless child and a weak, aging adult. Then you can worry about galaxies.

    1. Re:Gaaahhhh by tom17 · · Score: 1

      This. And quickly, i'm running out of time.

    2. Re:Gaaahhhh by pipatron · · Score: 1

      First of all, people are trying to do this already, probably on much more powerful hardware. Second, simulating an organism to the level that we need is probably a lot more demanding than simulating a galaxy to the level that these people need.

      --
      c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
    3. Re:Gaaahhhh by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let's simulate a single cell, then an organism, then aging. Then we can start extending our lifespan. THEN we can start living, not just this handful of years between being a powerless child and a weak, aging adult. Then you can worry about galaxies.

      What does an astrophysicist know about cellular biology? Probably about as much as a biologist knows about astrophysics.

      Compounding that, we wouldn't have made a fraction of the scientific progress to date if we focused on a single discipline until it was mastered before moving onto the next one. What good would supersonic airliners be if our civil and material engineering knowledge never learned how to make a tarmac which could support their weight?

      Ever wonder how much of our knowledge of high energy particles and fields came about because of cross-pollenation from physicists?

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    4. Re:Gaaahhhh by vertinox · · Score: 1

      You mean like this?

      http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/extreme-machines/4337190

      Well its simulating neurons... I suppose that's close enough.

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
    5. Re:Gaaahhhh by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      I'm still waiting for my cyborg body...

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    6. Re:Gaaahhhh by dominious · · Score: 1

      I wonder if (theoretically) in a simulated galaxy, in which all particles and physical rules have been considered, some kind of simulated life-form can evolve from strange interactions of those particles and rules. Then, does this simulated life have any difference from real-life (reference to "The 13th floor")? I mean, for the living forms inside the simulation it will be like real life. I'm thinking if in theory there is anything to contradict this. Is it possible?

    7. Re:Gaaahhhh by timeOday · · Score: 1

      THEN we can start living, not just this handful of years between being a powerless child and a weak, aging adult. Then you can worry about galaxies.

      Nature already has a process for eternal renewal - death and birth. Our species as a whole has no pre-determined expiration date, and the ability to pass information through the generations. What difference does it really make whether it's us individually that live on, or our descendants?

    8. Re:Gaaahhhh by allusionist · · Score: 1

      I am not my descendants. I'd love to see the new discoveries that will be made about our place in the cosmos, the new technologies and art and culture that will be created in the distant future for myself, as would a great many others.

    9. Re:Gaaahhhh by monkyyy · · Score: 1

      and old people need to die or no progress would be made racist didnt start dieing till the slave owners started dieing

      --
      warning pointless sig
  9. Use The Force , Luke , In The by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    botnet cloud.

    Yours In Osh,
    K. Trout

  10. too many atoms, not enough processors by smallshot · · Score: 1

    did anyone consider ahead of time how many calculations would be necessary before they invested all that money?

    1. Re:too many atoms, not enough processors by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 1

      We wouldnt have had this story if they had

  11. Re:Simulating Galexies by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Why a supercomputer? Why don't they use a vibrator like everyone else?

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  12. Does it run Windows? by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    Dont want to wait 15 billon years to see the next Blue Screen of Big Bang

  13. Brain vs. Galaxy Simulation by Sonny+Yatsen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's interesting to think that the university is attempting to use 800 processor cores to simulate galaxies, when IBM uses 147,456 processors to do a neuron-by-neuron simulation of the human brain.

    --
    My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
    1. Re:Brain vs. Galaxy Simulation by Antisyzygy · · Score: 1

      Well, Id imagine it takes quite a bit longer than the IBM super computer to do an equal amount of work.

      --
      That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
    2. Re:Brain vs. Galaxy Simulation by OnePumpChump · · Score: 1

      He's too busy fighting shambling men in rubber masks.

    3. Re:Brain vs. Galaxy Simulation by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      Well, Id imagine it takes quite a bit longer than the IBM super computer to do an equal amount of work.

      An equal amount of computation, sure. But how much computation is necessary to get useful results? Both may not be working on problems of equal magnitude.

      A backhoe can move more dirt than I can with a shovel, but if all I have to move is 1 cubic meter, and the backhoe has to move 1000... my workload is still a lot less.

      --
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    4. Re:Brain vs. Galaxy Simulation by tibit · · Score: 1

      They don't do a simulation of the entire brain, just a part of the cortex. And their simulation runs at maybe 1% of real time.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    5. Re:Brain vs. Galaxy Simulation by quanticle · · Score: 1

      There's a big difference in the problem. Namely, its possible to work at a coarser level of granularity when dealing with galaxies. You might not be able to simulate individual stars, but you can simulate star clusters and the clumps of dark matter to get approximations. With the brain simulation, its not possible to abstract away as much detail, hence the higher hardware requirements.

      --
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  14. Simulating a Galaxy on a computer? by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

    Ford has been doing that for years now!

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  15. How long before ... by cowtamer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The galaxies in the simulation develop planets, scientists, and their own Galaxy Simulators???

    Has anyone else been bothered the fact that energy is quantized? It always made me feel like we were looking at pixels we weren't supposed to see :)

    1. Re:How long before ... by tom17 · · Score: 1

      Well it'd be a bit of a 'round-the-houses' method, but we'd have invented AI.. Finally!

    2. Re:How long before ... by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      The galaxies in the simulation develop planets, scientists, and their own Galaxy Simulators???

      Has anyone else been bothered the fact that energy is quantized? It always made me feel like we were looking at pixels we weren't supposed to see :)

      Why should I be bothered, if you look at it just the right way, it looks like...

      Turtles.

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    3. Re:How long before ... by dominious · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ref. to "The 13th floor". I just posted something similar a few posts before:)

  16. What is is new here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Haven't researchers been doing such simulations for a decade?

  17. Waste of Time by MrTripps · · Score: 1, Informative

    Let me save those guys some time: 42

    --
    "I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
    1. Re:Waste of Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Let me save those guys some time: 42

      What were the input params again?

    2. Re:Waste of Time by tom17 · · Score: 2, Informative

      "what do you get if you multiply six by nine"

    3. Re:Waste of Time by damien_kane · · Score: 3, Funny

      I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe

    4. Re:Waste of Time by tom17 · · Score: 1

      Informative? Seriously?

  18. Obligatory XKCD by Ryanrule · · Score: 1, Funny

    Obligatory XKCD http://xkcd.com/505/

  19. Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by vlm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even with 800 AMD processor cores at its disposal the university is still hitting the limits of what is possible..

    Meaningless uninformed journalist bs filler puff. What is possible, is simulating every subatomic particle in the universe at planck time intervals for the total age of the universe, repeatedly for an infinite combination of different cosmological constants to see what you get. That will never be done, of course.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    1. Re:Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even with 800 AMD processor cores at its disposal the university is still hitting the limits of what is possible..

      Meaningless uninformed journalist bs filler puff. What is possible, is simulating every subatomic particle in the universe at planck time intervals for the total age of the universe, repeatedly for an infinite combination of different cosmological constants to see what you get. That will never be done, of course.

      Actually there are many who argue that our universe is exactly that! Which is to say one of those iterations in someone's experiment with a few constants fixed and the rest set to run randomly.

    2. Re:Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With quantum computers, it may be possible. So don't be too sure.

    3. Re:Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even with 800 AMD processor cores at its disposal the university is still hitting the limits of what is possible..

      Meaningless uninformed journalist bs filler puff. What is possible, is simulating every subatomic particle in the universe at planck time intervals for the total age of the universe, repeatedly for an infinite combination of different cosmological constants to see what you get. That will never be done, of course.

      It has happened before and it will happen again. What do you think this universe is? I, personally, can't wait to see the next simulation.

    4. Re:Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by froggymana · · Score: 1

      But how would you set up the computer to compute its own particles? If you really want a truly accurate representation of the entire universe you would need to include the computer doing this... I sense a paradox coming on.

      --
      "To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
    5. Re:Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Perhaps the simulator's universe is bigger than ours, or their computer is in a 4D universe or they found a way to tap into a 4th dimension.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    6. Re:Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by monkyyy · · Score: 1

      and they probably r watching u fap

      --
      warning pointless sig
    7. Re:Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I don't think I'd be their first choice if they had such ability.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    8. Re:Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by monkyyy · · Score: 1

      hard to say in the middle ages being fat was what was attractive maybe its a universe full of gay old people who love people who in front of a computer screen motionless longer then they sleep

      --
      warning pointless sig
  20. computing astronomers doing this for decades by peter303 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Every year they can do more detail models. And they become clever in modeling. For example, aggregate gravity fields.

  21. Of course it is overwelmed by ATestR · · Score: 1

    Let's assume that they are trying to simulate the formation of a small galaxy... that would be no more than 100 million stellar masses. That's still a lot of points, a whole lot of calculations.

    --
    âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
  22. grape processors are faster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    the grape-5 does N-body simulations using specialized hardware that is faster than a standard CPU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Pipe

  23. Recursive Loop? by bigrockpeltr · · Score: 1

    What happens when the simulation get to the point where humanity is 'advanced' enough technologically to try to model the universe with supercomputers? its an obvious infinite loop that will cause the universe to crash.... and they are professors? sheesh

    --
    $ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
  24. Simulating universe on big scale is by toxygen01 · · Score: 1

    already presented here http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/24C3/mp4/24c3-2155-en-universe_on_supercomputers-COMPATIBLE.mp4
    and in very interesting way.

  25. Dual GTX 480 by mangu · · Score: 4, Funny

    800 cores.... that's like 134 CPU's

    Or two GPUs.

    If it can run Crysis it can simulate galaxies.

    1. Re:Dual GTX 480 by arisvega · · Score: 1

      You've modded this funny, but it's true (disclaimer; I'm doing numerical simulations for a living)-

      On a physical problem that can be described by a handful of equations (as in a per-particle simulation of gravity and electromagnetism, or a per-mesh element of a fluid) the calculations are very simple; the caveat is that they have to be iterated a couple of trillion times before getting a result; GPUs are designed to do exactly this (probably as a colaterral of how they are designed to handle vertices). Why do you think nVidia has been selling these ?

      --
      The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
  26. Better uses by slapout · · Score: 1

    Simulating galaxies?? Why not use it for something useful -- like ray tracing Wolf3d?!

    --
    Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
  27. Compared to what? by Gemini8403 · · Score: 1

    Eight hundred cores of any type is TINY as far as supercomputers go. Most large US universities generally have at least one (if not several) supercomputers that are multiple times (if not an order of magnitude) larger than this. Never mind that most research projects on supercomputers NEVER use the whole system at once - it's more of a timeshare thing where you book however many threads for a certain length of time. Yes, the prospect of the research is interesting. That being said, other than that there isn't any impressive or really useful information in the article. What might be more intriguing is listing how long they plan on running the simulation and how many threads it's using.

  28. curious by sea4ever · · Score: 1

    Let them simulate the milky way. I'm curious as to whether or not they will be able to simulate the genesis of life on Earth. That will be interesting..
    Hey, maybe if they let the simulation run long enough, the simulated earthlings will make their own simulation.

  29. New Galaxy Porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At first I thought this said "Stimulating Galaxies with Supercomputers"...oooooooh baby

  30. Fidelity of Mathematical Models by florescent_beige · · Score: 1

    There must be a principle out there somewhere that says the universe cannot be accurately simulated by anything smaller than the universe. And if there isn't can I invent it and call it The Principle of Computational Hopelessness?

    --
    Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
    1. Re:Fidelity of Mathematical Models by Psaakyrn · · Score: 1

      Technically it would depend on the properties of the universe. If it's turing complete, we can already simulate it given enough time and/or space. Since we're not doign a simulation of the whole timeframe of the universe but only it's beginning, time (and hence space) is not an issue.

  31. Please Slashdot editors, by Prune · · Score: 3, Interesting

    be more careful with article summaries. They're wore than newspaper headlines these days. The "Over in the UK Durham University is tasking its supercomputing cluster with nothing less than recreating how galaxies are born and evolve over the course of billions of year" could describe any of the countless galaxy evolution simulations that have been done for a couple of decades already at various places, and gives no indication as to what's new about this instance. In other words, the headline is at best absolutely uninformative, and at worst, misleading.

    --
    "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
  32. Speed of light in a simulation by mangu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Has anyone else been bothered the fact that energy is quantized?

    Even more significant is that there's an intrinsic speed limitation in a simulation.

    When you simulate a continuous medium by dividing it into small space and time steps, there's a speed "c" that's equal to the space step divided by the time step which cannot be exceeded by anything in the simulation.

    1. Re:Speed of light in a simulation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would the Planck Time, tp, be a sufficient level of granularity for your simulations?

    2. Re:Speed of light in a simulation by Beardydog · · Score: 1

      Unless you skip pixels OMG QUANTUM TUNNELING!!1!

      In conclusion, God sucks at collision checking.

  33. reminds me of the "Simulation Argument" by gundersd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The simulation argument paper proposes a philosophical argument about this sort of thing. The consequences that they come up with are pretty interesting. Of course, there are arguments against such a configuration of the universe as well...

  34. Cambridge University by MrTors · · Score: 1

    How are the numbers over at Cambridge University? I guess David Braben is working on this too...

  35. Galaxy models by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here're some more pictures of the galaxy models created at the institute and some of the supercomputers they use to create them
    http://www.silicon.com/technology/hardware/2010/09/15/photos-digital-galaxies-and-the-supercomputers-behind-them-39746257/

  36. Don't know why they go through this when... by rgviza · · Score: 1

    ... they could simply ask Ceiling Cat to create a new galaxy and record it on IMAX.

    --
    Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
  37. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't understand what's so special about TFA, especially because 800 cores is nothing; someone should tell them about BOINC: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

  38. Total recall by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Amy can remember it for you wholesale.

  39. Does it take into account by djh2400 · · Score: 1

    the supercomputer in the virtual galaxy that is simulating a galaxy?