GRAPE newletter vol.1 (01 Oct 2000)

Dear Colleagues:

This is the first issue of a GRAPE newsletter that we intend to send
out every few months, to inform you of new developments.  We will post
this information on our web site as well.  If you prefer not to receive
email versions of this newsletter, please see below for instructions as
to how to unscribe.

       +------------------CONTENTS:-----------------------------+
       | 1) New GRAPE web site                                  |
       | 2) GRAPE-6 reaches 4 Teraflops                         |
       | 3) GRAPE-5 Acquired By NAO-Japan                       |
       | 4) IAU Symposium 208, Tokyo, July 10-13, 2001          |
       | 5) Immersive Visualizations at AMNH, New York          |
       | 6) GRAPE-6 a Gordon Bell finalist                      |
       | 7) How to unsubscribe                                  |
       +--------------------------------------------------------+

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 NEW GRAPE WEB SITE

Yes, we know, the old web site name <http://grape.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/grape/>
was indeed difficult to remember.  So we became more lean and mean, and
we can now be found under <http://astrogrape.org/>.

We also have a new webmaster, Tomohiro Sensui, a graduate student in
Jun Makino's group at Tokyo University.  You can reach him with any
questions or suggestions at <webmaster@astrogrape.org> or also at
<grape@astrogrape.org>, whatever you find easier to remember.

In addition, you can reach any of us directly through the email aliases:

  Piet Hut        <piet@astrogrape.org>
  Jun Makino      <makino@astrogrape.org>
  Tomohiro Sensui <sensui@astrogrape.org>

If any of you would like to report about progress in your own group,
with respect to technical developments and/or astrophysical results
of GRAPE-based calculations, please send your contributions to any of
these addresses.

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 GRAPE-6 REACHES 4 TERAFLOPS

As of July 20, a 8-board version of the GRAPE-6 with a peak speed of
4 Tflops, is up and running.  Star clusters are evolving and massive
black holes are spiralling in at higher-then-ever simulation speed.

Currently, one processor board houses 16 processor chips, but in the
future we intend to develop boards with 32 processors as a standard.
The theoretical peak speed of one GRAPE-6 chip is currently around
33 Gflops (at a clock speed of 90 MHz).

The full GRAPE-6 configuration is expected to become ready around the
end of 2001,  with a peak speed of 100 Tflops.

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 GRAPE-5 ACQUIRED BY NAO-JAPAN

NAO-Japan, the National Astronomical Observatory in Mitaka, Tokyo,
will acquire a 16-board GRAPE-5 system in Jan 2001.  They will
integrate this GRAPE-5 system into their computer system.  Each
board has a peak speed of 40 Gflops.  The host will be a set of
Myrinet-connected Alpha boxes: 16 2-processor boxes in total.
GRAPE-5 is the successor of GRAPE-3, optimized for collisionless
simulations unlike GRAPE-4/6.


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 IAU SYMPOSIUM 208, TOKYO, JULY 10-13, 2001

We are glad to announce that we have just received official IAU
permission to hold a four-day IAU Symposium in Tokyo, July 10-13,
2001, on `Astrophysical Supercomputing Using Particles'.  Details to
appear soon on the website:

<http://grape.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/iau208.html>

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 IMMERSIVE VISUALIZATIONS AT AMNH, NEW YORK

     Following the conference on Stellar Collisions, at AMNH, the
American Museum of Natural History in New York City in June, we have
started to use their Hayden Planetarium for interactive visualizations
of the large data sets generated with GRAPE-4 and recently GRAPE-6
runs.  Later that same month, Steve McMillan (Drexel), Simon Portegies
Zwart (MIT), Peter Teuben (Maryland) visited Michael Shara (chair,
astrophysics dep. AMNH) and Piet Hut (IAS, research associate AMNH) at
AMNH.  See <http://www.physics.drexel.edu/~steve/amnh.html> for
pictures of our star cluster simulations hanging in the sky.  AMNH has
its own GRAPE-6, received on loan at the time of the conference on
Stellar Collisions.

     Together with Jun Makino (Tokyo) and Carter Emmart (director of
visualization, AMNH), the seven of us received a start-up grant from
the Sloan Foundation to interactively `observe' our GRAPE-generated
star cluster simulations.  In order to adapt and extend the existing
visualization software at the Hayden Planetarium, our group has started
a productive collaboration with the Virtual Director team at NCSA,
Donna Cox, Stuart Levy, and Bob Patterson.  We intend to integrate
elements from our Starlab software environment with their software,
to enable fully interactive data mining of our 4D spacetime histories
of star cluster simulations runs.

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 GRAPE-6 A GORDON BELL FINALIST

     An 8-board GRAPE-6 version has been selected as one of the
Gordon Bell Prize finalists for the year 2000.  The final selection
will be announced during SC2000 conference  at Dallas on
Nov. 9th (See <http://www.sc2000.org/> for details ). GRAPE-4 was
awarded the performance prizes in 1995 and 1996, and GRAPE-5 got the
cost/performance prize in 1999.


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 HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE

Just send an email message to <grape@astrogrape.org>

with Subject:unsubscribe

----------------------------------------------------------------------

           Piet Hut and Jun Makino
           (submissions to: <piet@astrogrape.org> or <grape@astrogrape.org>)