QCDPAX is a processor array designed for the QCD simulation.
The lattice gauge theory is a discrete model of QCD(quantum
chromodynamics). It is considered to be able to calculate the strong
interaction physical observables from the first principle by the
numerical simulation of this model. By the huge degrees of freedom,
the simulation of QCD requires huge amount of floating-point
operations. The quenched(ignoring the effect of quark field)
simulations on the 16x16x16x48 lattice typically take 1000 hours of
computing time on supercomputers of several hundred MFLOPS.
We built QCDPAX to obtain
a factor 100 more of computer resources in order to get results at the
level of a few percent statistical and systematic errors. The
simulation of lattice gauge theories is suitable to the parallel
processing, because it has big degree of freedom, homogeneity, and
locality. Exploiting these features allowed us to construct the
specialized processor array of high performance and low cost.
PACS/PAX is the name of the series of the Parallel computer.
Related subject: History of PACS/PAX Computers