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arXiv · 2601.19654

Mercury-Opal: the GPU-accelerated version of the n-body code for planet formation Mercury-Arxes

Paolo Simonetti·Diego Turrini·Romolo Politi·Scigé J. Liu·Sergio Fonte·Danae Polychroni·Stavro Lambrov Ivanovski
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Abstract

Large n-body simulations with fully interacting objects represent the next frontier in computational planetary formation studies. In this paper, we present Mercury-Opal, the GPU-accelerated version of the n-body planet formation code Mercury-Arxes.The porting to GPU computing has been performed through OpenACC to ensure cross-platform support and minimize the code restructuring efforts while retaining most of the performance increase expected from GPU computing. We tested Mercury-Opal against its parent code Mercury-Arxes under conditions that put GPU computing at disadvantage and nevertheless show how the GPU-based execution provides advantages with respect to CPU-serial execution even for limited computational loads.

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Paolo Simonetti, Diego Turrini, Romolo Politi, Scigé J. Liu, Sergio Fonte, Danae Polychroni, Stavro Lambrov Ivanovski. 2026-01-27. Mercury-Opal: the GPU-accelerated version of the n-body code for planet formation Mercury-Arxes. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19654

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