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N. Eicker

Publications and source records attributed to N. Eicker.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2009

QPACE -- a QCD parallel computer based on Cell processors

QPACE is a novel parallel computer which has been developed to be primarily used for lattice QCD simulations. The compute power is provided by the IBM PowerXCell 8i processor, an enhanced version of the Cell processor that is used in the Playstation 3. The QPACE nodes are interconnected by a custom, application optimized 3-dimensional torus network implemented on an FPGA. To achieve the very high packaging density of 26 TFlops per rack a new water cooling concept has been developed and successfully realized. In this paper we give an overview of the architecture and highlight some important technical details of the system. Furthermore, we provide initial performance results and report on the installation of 8 QPACE racks providing an aggregate peak performance of 200 TFlops.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2008

Status of the QPACE Project

We give an overview of the QPACE project, which is pursuing the development of a massively parallel, scalable supercomputer for LQCD. The machine is a three-dimensional torus of identical processing nodes, based on the PowerXCell 8i processor. The nodes are connected by an FPGA-based, application-optimized network processor attached to the PowerXCell 8i processor. We present a performance analysis of lattice QCD codes on QPACE and corresponding hardware benchmarks.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2007

QCD on the Cell Broadband Engine

We evaluate IBM's Enhanced Cell Broadband Engine (BE) as a possible building block of a new generation of lattice QCD machines. The Enhanced Cell BE will provide full support of double-precision floating-point arithmetics, including IEEE-compliant rounding. We have developed a performance model and applied it to relevant lattice QCD kernels. The performance estimates are supported by micro- and application-benchmarks that have been obtained on currently available Cell BE-based computers, such as IBM QS20 blades and PlayStation 3. The results are encouraging and show that this processor is an interesting option for lattice QCD applications. For a massively parallel machine on the basis of the Cell BE, an application-optimized network needs to be developed.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2003

On the scaling of computational particle physics codes on cluster computers

Many appplications in computational science are sufficiently compute-intensive that they depend on the power of parallel computing for viability. For all but the "embarrassingly parallel" problems, the performance depends upon the level of granularity that can be achieved on the computer platform. Our computational particle physics applications require machines that can support a wide range of granularities, but in general, compute-intensive state-of-the-art projects will require finely grained distributions. Of the different types of machines available for the task, we consider cluster computers. The use of clusters of commodity computers in high performance computing has many advantages including the raw price/performance ratio and the flexibility of machine configuration and upgrade. Here we focus on what is usually considered the weak point of cluster technology; the scaling behaviour when faced with a numerically intensive parallel computation. To this end we examine the scaling of our own applications from numerical quantum field theory on a cluster and infer conclusions about the more general case.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2002

Calculation of Nucleon Electromagnetic Form Factors

The fomalism is developed to express nucleon matrix elements of the electromagnetic current in terms of form factors consistent with the translational, rotational, and parity symmetries of a cubic lattice. We calculate the number of these form factors and show how appropriate linear combinations approach the continuum limit.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2002

Continuum Extrapolation of Moments of Nucleon Quark Distributions in Full QCD

Moments of light cone quark density, helicity, and transversity distributions are calculated in unquenched lattice QCD at $β= 5.5$ and $β= 5.3$ using Wilson fermions on $ 16^3 \times 32 $ lattices. These results are combined with earlier calculations at $β= 5.6$ using SESAM configurations to study the continuum limit.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2002

Moments of Nucleon Light Cone Quark Distributions Calculated in Full Lattice QCD

Moments of the quark density, helicity, and transversity distributions are calculated in unquenched lattice QCD. Calculations of proton matrix elements of operators corresponding to these moments through the operator product expansion have been performed on $16^3 \times 32$ lattices for Wilson fermions at $β= 5.6$ using configurations from the SESAM collaboration and at $β= 5.5$ using configurations from SCRI. One-loop perturbative renormalization corrections are included. At quark masses accessible in present calculations, there is no statistically significant difference between quenched and full QCD results, indicating that the contributions of quark-antiquark excitations from the Dirac Sea are small. Close agreement between calculations with cooled configurations containing essentially only instantons and the full gluon configurations indicates that quark zero modes associated with instantons play a dominant role. Naive linear extrapolation of the full QCD calculation to the physical pion mass yields results inconsistent with experiment. Extrapolation to the chiral limit including the physics of the pion cloud can resolve this discrepancy and the requirements for a definitive chiral extrapolation are described.

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arXiv2002

Flavour Singlet Mesons in Full QCD on the Lattice

We apply spectral methods to compute the OZI-rule suppressed loop-loop correlators in the pseudoscalar meson flavour singlet channel. Using SESAM configurations (obtained with two degenerate sea quark flavours on 16x16x16x32 lattices at beta = 5.6 with standard Wilson action), we find for the first time clear evidence for mass plateau formation in the eta' channel of this theory. As a consequence, we observe a clear signal of a mass gap persistent under chiral extrapolation. This sets the stage for a more realistic two-channel approach, where partially quenched strange quarks would be included, in addition to u, d sea quarks.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2001

Light Quark Masses with $N_f=2$ Wilson Fermions

We present new data on the mass of the light and strange quarks from SESAM/T$χ$L. The results were obtained on lattice-volumes of $16^3\times 32$ and $24^3\times 40$ points, with the possibility to investigate finite-size effects. Since the SESAM/T$χ$L ensembles at $β=5.6$ have been complemented by configurations with $β=5.5$, moreover, we are now able to attempt the continuum extrapolation (CE) of the quark masses with standard Wilson fermions.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2001

A New Approach to eta' on the Lattice

We perform an eta' mass analysis based on a total of 1130 dynamical gauge field configurations, with 5 different quark mass values on lattices of size 16^3*32 (SESAM) and 24^3*40 (TkL) at beta = 5.6. We employ the stochastic estimator technique and spectral methods to deal with the disconnected piece of the flavour singlet correlation function. We demonstrate that very early plateau formation in the local eta' mass can be achieved by first ground state projecting the connected piece of its correlator.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2001

The Quest for Light Sea Quarks: Algorithms for the Future

As part of a systematic algorithm study, we present first results on a performance comparison between a multibosonic algorithm and the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm as employed by the SESAM collaboration. The standard Wilson fermion action is used on 32*16^3 lattices at beta=5.5.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2001

On the low fermionic eigenmode dominance in QCD on the lattice

We demonstrate the utility of a spectral approximation to fermion loop operators using low-lying eigenmodes of the hermitian Dirac-Wilson matrix, Q. The investigation is based on a total of 400 full QCD vacuum configurations, with two degenerate flavors of dynamical Wilson fermions at beta =5.6, at two different sea quark masses. The spectral approach is highly competitive for accessing both topological charge and disconnected diagrams, on large lattices and small quark masses. We propose suitable partial summation techniques that provide sufficient saturation for estimating Tr Q^{-1}, which is related to the topological charge. In the effective mass plot of the eta' meson we achieved a consistent early plateau formation, by ground state projecting the connected piece of its propagator.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2000

Constructing Improved Overlap Fermions in QCD

We describe an explicit construction of approximate Ginsparg-Wilson fermions for QCD. We use ingredients of perfect action origin, and further elements. The spectrum of the lattice Dirac operator reveals the quality of the approximation. We focus on beta =6 for optimisation. Such fermions are intended to be inserted into the overlap formula. Hence we also test the speed of convergence under polynomial evaluation of the overlap formula.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2000

Moments of Structure Functions in Full QCD

Moments of the quark density distribution, moments of the quark helicity distribution, and the tensor charge are calculated in full QCD. Calculations of matrix elements of operators from the operator product expansion have been performed on $16^3 \times 32$ lattices for Wilson fermions at $β= 5.6$ using configurations from the SESAM collaboration and at $β= 5.5$ using configurations from SCRI. One-loop perturbative renormalization corrections are included. Selected results are compared with corresponding quenched calculations and with calculations using cooled configurations.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2000

Flavour singlet pseudoscalar masses in N_f = 2 QCD

We perform a lattice mass analysis in the flavour singlet pseudoscalar channel on the SESAM and TXL full QCD vacuum configurations, with 2 active flavours of dynamical Wilson fermions at beta = 5.6. At our inverse lattice spacing, a^-1 = 2.3 GeV, we retrieve by a chiral extrapolation to the physical light quark masses the value m_eta' = 3.7(+8)(-4) m_pi. A crude extrapolation from (N_f = 3) phenomenology would suggest m_eta' \approx 5.1 m_pi for N_f = 2 QCD. we verify that the mass gap between the singlet state eta' and the pi flavour triplt state is due to gauge configurations with non-trivial topology.

hep-lat↗
arXiv2000

A High Precision Study of the QQ(bar) Potential from Wilson Loops in the Regime of String Breaking

For lattice QCD with two sea quark flavours we compute the static quark antiquark potential V(R) in the regime where string breaking is expected. In order to increase statistics, we make full use of the lattice information by including all lattice vectors R to any possible lattice separation in the infrared regime. The corresponding paths between the lattice points are constructed by means of a generalized Bresenham algorithm as known from computer graphics. As a results we achieve a determination of the unquenched potential in the range .8 to 1.5 fm with hitherto unknown precision. Furthermore, we demonstrate some error reducing methods for the evaluation of the transition matrix element between two- and four-quark states.

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