Fast Fourier Transform Accelerated Fast Multipole Algorithm

William D. Elliott and John A. Board, Jr.

Abstract

This paper describes an O(p^2 log (p)N) implementation of the Fast Multipole Algorithm (FMA) for N-body simulations. This new method of computing the FMA is faster than the original, which was O(p^4 N), where p is the number of terms retained in the truncated multipole expansion representation of the potential field of a collection of charged particles. The p term determines the accuracy of the calculation. The limiting O(p^ 4) computation in the original FMA is a convolution-like operation on an array of multipole coefficients. This paper describes a conversion of the limiting computation to linear convolution which is then computed in the Fourier domain using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The resulting O(p^2 log (p)) subroutine has a speedup of 2 on a sequential processor over the original method for p = 8, and a speedup of 4 for p = 16. The new subroutine vectorizes well and has a speedup of 3 on a vector processor at p = 8 and a speedup of 6 at p = 16.


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This page last modified 7/12/95 by Daniel Paul