Renewal: An Evaluation of Video-Gaming Technologies for Scientific High-Performance Computing in Gravitational Physics

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This project broadly impacts scientific research and trains graduate students for potential careers not only in the associated scientific areas, but also in the computer industry. The use of large computer simulations (supercomputing) for research and development is now common to all areas of science and engineering. This project develops a novel approach towards supercomputing by utilizing very low-cost and high-efficiency computer technology developed by the consumer gaming industry. The benefits of this broadly applicable approach will be demonstrated by advancing the research areas of black hole astrophysics, and also the search for new pulsars in astronomical data. In addition, because graduate students will be trained on cutting-edge computer technology and scientific algorithms, this project will generate highly employable engineers and scientists, including those associated with great national need. The project advances the computational research areas of black hole astrophysics and the search for pulsars in astronomical data using a novel approach toward supercomputing utilizing consumer gaming hardware. The black holes related research will impact our understanding of these important astrophysical objects wherein the effects of gravity are absolutely extreme. It will also help improve the challenging on-going search method for gravitational waves that were predicted by Einstein nearly a century ago, and yet still have to be directly observed. The NSF leads this international effort through its very large LIGO detector. The project will also positively impact Einstein@Home, which is a highly successful big-data public distributed computing project associated to the current gravitational and radio wave observatories, searching for pulsars. The proposed work involves training graduate students in research, utilizing cutting-edge software development frameworks and associated hardware, thus producing highly employable engineers and scientists. Because the research activities will contribute to the development of broad computational tools and also to the education and training of students, this project will likely have an impact beyond its research area and thus potentially benefit other scientific and engineering disciplines.