High-Speed Computation of Distinct Element Method by Pipelined Processors

Distinct Element Method, or DEM, is considered practical and applied to many kinds of numerical analysis; however, it requires a lot of calculation time. A new method, which accelerates computation speed by 3.1 to 31 times, is presented in this paper. A pipelined processor architecture is employed to enhance the process of making a list of contact elements, which needs N2 calculation cost, where N is the number of elements. In addition, the calculation precision of the processors is reconfigurable, that is, either 32 bit floating or 32 bit fixed point precision can be implemented on a single hardware when to operate. That is achieved by making use of FPGA, or Field Programmable Gate Array, which is a dynamically rewritable logic device. Through experiments, it is confirmed that our method works as was expected, and is effective.