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I'm interested in doing simulations with large numbers of particles and need a good n-body code. Are there any out there in the public domain that are open-source and what are their strengths and weaknesses. I'm interested in all types of codes, ones that can be run on a multi-core desktop for basic simulations and also ones that can be run on large parallel clusters (I have access to both).

For each entry please provide a link and a brief summary of the nature of the code and strengths of the software. The goal here is to provide a reference list for those interested in the topic.

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  • $\begingroup$ You might want to look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravit in addition to the great suggestions below. $\endgroup$
    – user854
    Commented Dec 25, 2015 at 16:25
  • $\begingroup$ I used the Gravit because it is full of options and the code is clear, but the integrator is simple and I'had implemented a Velocity Verlet one (and a Brook+ version to be aapted to opencl). It is Lua scriptable ! $\endgroup$
    – Helder Velez
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 14:41

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First of all, I do not have any experience with this, I am an Astronomy hobbyist at best. So I am just going to present what I found with minimal comment at this time. I found this web page that links to several programs: http://nbody.sourceforge.net/ They link to the University of Washington and their n-body shop. I don't know what your status must be to get that software (a student perhaps).

The first link also lists these sources:

Other Astrophysical N-body projects

Integration with work by others is very desirable. Here are some projects we know about. To let us know about others by submitting a new item to the SourceForge Bugs Tracker.

  • The Nbody Shop - The first software released here has come from this group. The TIPSY nbody visualization program is available from this group.
  • NChilada - a project to create a parallel visualization and analysis package.
  • Hubble in a Bottle - a High performance parallel visualization tool. Hosted on Sourceforge.
  • NEMO - a stellar dynamics toolbox.
  • GADGET - a freely available parallel code for cosmological N-body/SPH simulations.
  • SUNRISE - a GPL program to do radiative transfer imaging of cosmological or galactic SPH simulations.
  • AMIGA - a freely available (GPL) shared memory parallel adaptive mesh code that also includes a group finder.
  • astro-sim.org - a community site with pointers to astrophysical CFD and n-body codes.

Some additional links that I have found:

http://nbody.softrecipe.com/

Starlab

Gravity 6

I hope this series of links gives you what you want.

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http://www.supersci.org/Codes.php

Some of those are open source and some not. You'll have to do some googling to get to the useful information, but it's somewhere to start, at least.

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Amara Graps wrote a good overview of n-body simulation methods.

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