GRAPE
Encyclopedia
- For the Tokyo University supercomputer, see Gravity PipeGravity PipeGravity Pipe, otherwise known as GRAPE, is a project which uses hardware acceleration to perform gravitational computations. Integrated with Beowulf-style commodity computers, the GRAPE system calculates the force of gravity that a given mass, such as a star, exerts on others...
.
GRAPE (Computers), or GRAphics Programming Environment is a software development environment for mathematical visualization
Mathematical visualization
Mathematical visualization is an aspect of geometry which allows one to understand and explore mathematical phenomena via visualization. Classically this consisted of two-dimensional drawings or building three-dimensional models , while today it most frequently consists of using computers to make...
, especially differential geometry and continuum mechanics.
The term graphical refers to the applications; the programming itself is mostly based on C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
. GRAPE was developed by the University of Bonn in Germany and is available for free for non-commercial purposes. It has not been developed actively since 1998.
The GRAPE Manual says the following about GRAPE
qfix Grape
Another graphical programming environment called GRAPE is developed by qfix and the University of Ulm. Here, it is used as a graphical tool for developing object oriented programs for controlling autonomous mobile robots. After arranging graphical program entities to receive the desired flow chart, the graphical program can be translated to source code (e.g. C++C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
). A modular interface makes the environment easy to extend, so additional classes can be integrated or different flowchart-to-code translator or compilers can be used.