In this paper, we describe the performance characteristics of GRAPE-6, the sixth-generation special-purpose computer for gravitational many-body problems. GRAPE-6 consists of 2048 custom pipeline chips, each of which integrates six pipeline processors specialized for the calculation of gravitational interaction between particles. The GRAPE hardware performs the evaluation of the interaction. The frontend processors perform all other operations, such as the time integration of the orbits of particles, I/O, on-the-fly analysis etc. The theoretical peak speed of GRAPE-6 is 63.4 Tflops. We present the result of benchmark runs, and discuss the performance characteristics. We also present the measured performance for a few real scientific applications. The best performance so far achieved with real applications is 35.3 Tflops.

As an entry for the 2002 Gordon Bell performance prize, we report the performance achieved on the GRAPE-6 system for a simulation of the early evolution of the protoplanet-planetesimal system of the Uranus-Neptune region. GRAPE-6 is a special-purpose computer for astrophysical N-body calculations. The present configuration has 2048 custom pipeline chips, each containing six pipeline processors for the calculation of gravitational interactions between particles. Its theoretical peak performance is 63.4 Tflops. The actual performance obtained was 29.5 Tflops, for a simulation of the early evolution of outer Solar system with 1.8 million planetesimals and two massive protoplanets.