Patent ID: 7653498

Claim:
An apparatus for calculating short-range forces between particles contained in a system, the apparatus comprising: a force calculator for calculating the short-range forces using particle data representing data of particles which are required to calculate the short-range forces; a storage unit for storing particle data of all particles contained in the system and cell data of respective cells representing spaces which are produced by dividing said system, said cell data including information to identify said cells and information representing the number of particles in said cells; an address generator for holding a cell list representing cell data of a central cell containing a central particle to be calculated for the short-range forces and a predetermined number of surrounding cells that are present around the central cell, for designating particle data of the central particle and particles that are present around the central particle, said particle data being used to calculate said short-range forces, from the cell data represented by said cell list, and for successively updating said cell list according to predetermined rules each time the calculation of short-range forces between each of all the particles in said central cell and the particles that are present around the central particle is completed, until each of the cells in the system has served as a central cell; and a memory controller for reading the particle data of the central particle and the particles that are present around the central particle that have been designated by said address generator, from said storage unit, and transferring the read particle data to said force calculator.