Communications of the ACM
No Need For Supercomputers
A group of physicists in Russia has learned to use a personal computer for calculations of complex equations of quantum mechanics much faster than can be accomplished with supercomputers.
Credit: nathanjsmarchand.com
Researchers from Lomonosov Moscow State University's (MSU) Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics have developed a method for calculating complex quantum-mechanical equations with personal computers, which they say is much faster than using supercomputers.
The equations describe the scattering of a few quantum particles, representing a quantum-mechanical version of the Newtonian theory of three-body systems.
The chief problem in solving such equations is calculating the integral kernel, which resembles a monitor screen with tens of billions of pixels, making their calculation via a good graphics processing unit possible. The researchers employed software created by Nvidia in conjunction with their own programs to divide their calculations over the many thousands of streams.
MSU professor Vladimir Kukulin says the PC can perform in 15 minutes work that would usually take a supercomputer two to three days to execute. "We reached the speed we couldn't even dream of," he says. "The program computes 260 million of complex double integrals on a desktop computer within three seconds only."
Kukulin says this breakthrough could be applicable to computing tasks in scientific areas such as plasma physics, electrodynamics, geophysics, and medicine.
From Lomonosov Moscow State University
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