A neutron star is one type of remnant of a star that has collapsed from a supernova event. As you would expect from the name, such a a star is composed almost entirely of neutrons. Neutron stars have a mass between 1.35 and about 2.1 solar masses. However, their radius is approximately 12 km. This means that they are very dense.
Astronomers have recently discovered the most massive Neutron Star yet known. This star goes by the lovely designation PSR J1614-2230 and is approximately 3,000 light years from Earth. This star is 1.97 solar masses, which is about 20% more massive than the previous record holder. To do this they used an instrument called Green Bank Ultimate Pulsar Processing Instrument (GUPPI). GUPPI is very dependent on high performance computing, and on graphics cards. The signal that they received from this instrument was processed on high end graphics cards. They use eight high-end workstations in a rack, each with a graphics card. The result is that these eight systems can do approximately 1 trillion operations per second.
Part II of the movie is after the break. It explains the technology behind GUPPI, including its use of GPUs.
via : Astronomers Discover Most Massive Neutron Star Yet Known
