A Micro Vector Processor for Molecular Mechanics Calculations
DAVID N. J. WHITE · ACS symposium series · 1981
Certain chemical computations such as molecular mechanics, molecular orbital and X-ray crystallographic calculations have always required large and powerful mainframe computers. The traditional solution to the problem of performing these calculations within individual laboratories, an end which is desirable for a number of reasons, has been the purchase of a minicomputer and the cramming of quart-sized programs into pint-sized machines. The floating point arithmetic capability of the average minicomputer is strictly limited and the need arose for peripheral devices, often called "array processors", to perform these operations for the minicomputer. This is a satisfactory, though still expensive, method of providing "in-house" number crunching facilities. However, the advent of the microprocessor and single chip floating point processors raises the possibility of providing these facilities at very modest cost indeed. Peripheral processors which are capable of performing floating point arithmetic operations at high speed are used to enhance the poor performance of