FPGA based coprocessor to calculate the energy of dipolar system
Giovanni Danese, L. De Lotto, Francesco Leporati, Alvaro Spelgatti · 2003
In this paper, an FPGA-based coprocessor is presented, interfaced with the CPU to a computer through a PCI bus. It allows a faster evaluation of the energy of a crystal, which, computationally, is usually the heaviest part of a liquid-crystal Monte Carlo simulation of a dipolar system. The work is part of a global project aiming to design and build a parallel system made up of a cluster of accelerated workstations communicating via one of the most advanced modern network technologies. First estimations of performance show a big acceleration with respect to the execution of the same application on an Intel CPU-based motherboard.