To investigate the nature of dark matter and dark energy, researchers from University of Zurich simulated the formation of our entire universe with the help of two GPU-accelerated supercomputers.
With their revolutionary code called PKDGRAV3, the group of astrophysicists developed a catalog of nearly 25 billion virtual galaxies generated from a two-trillion particle cosmological simulation using 4,000+ Tesla P100 GPU nodes on the Piz Daint supercomputer at CSCS in Switzerland, and an eight-trillion particle simulation on the Tesla K20 GPU-accelerated Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab.
According to their paper, “the cosmological experiments of the next decade might shed light on this ‘dark sector’ and possibly revolutionize modern physics.”
This gigantic catalogue of virtual galaxies is being used to calibrate the experiments on board the Euclid satellite, that will be launched in 2020 with the objective of investigating the nature of dark matter and dark energy. “The nature of dark energy remains one of the main unsolved puzzles in modern science,” says Romain Teyssier, UZH professor for computational astrophysics.
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GPU-Accelerated Supercomputers Create Largest Simulation of the Universe
Jun 13, 2017
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AI-Generated Summary
- Researchers from the University of Zurich used the PKDGRAV3 code to simulate the formation of the universe on two GPU-accelerated supercomputers.
- A two-trillion particle cosmological simulation ran on 4,000+ Tesla P100 GPU nodes on the Piz Daint supercomputer at CSCS in Switzerland.
- An eight-trillion particle simulation ran on the Tesla K20 GPU-accelerated Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab.
- The resulting catalog of nearly 25 billion virtual galaxies is being used to calibrate experiments on the Euclid satellite, which was scheduled for launch in 2020 to investigate dark matter and dark energy.
Next Steps
- Read the University of Zurich press release for additional details.
- Review the research paper describing the simulation methodology and results.
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