The Q Continuum Simulation: Harnessing the Power of GPU Accelerated Supercomputers

TL;DR

The Q Continuum simulation is a large-scale, GPU-accelerated cosmological N-body simulation on Titan, enabling detailed sky catalog construction and analysis of cosmological statistics at unprecedented resolution.

Contribution

This work presents the first large-scale cosmological simulation on GPU-accelerated supercomputers, demonstrating high resolution and volume for advanced sky modeling.

Findings

Largest cosmology simulation with over half a trillion particles

Detailed analysis of mass power spectra and halo properties

Successful utilization of GPU accelerators on Titan

Abstract

Modeling large-scale sky survey observations is a key driver for the continuing development of high resolution, large-volume, cosmological simulations. We report the first results from the 'Q Continuum' cosmological N-body simulation run carried out on the GPU-accelerated supercomputer Titan. The simulation encompasses a volume of (1300 Mpc)^3 and evolves more than half a trillion particles, leading to a particle mass resolution of ~1.5 X 10^8 M_sun. At this mass resolution, the Q Continuum run is currently the largest cosmology simulation available. It enables the construction of detailed synthetic sky catalogs, encompassing different modeling methodologies, including semi-analytic modeling and sub-halo abundance matching in a large, cosmological volume. Here we describe the simulation and outputs in detail and present first results for a range of cosmological statistics, such as mass power spectra, halo mass functions, and halo mass-concentration relations for different epochs. We also provide details on challenges connected to running a simulation on almost 90% of Titan, one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, including our usage of Titan's GPU accelerators.