Numerical studies of galaxy formation using special purpose hardware

I review recent progress in numerically simulating the formation and evolution of galaxies in hierarchically clustering universes. Special emphasis is given to results based on high-resolution gas dynamical simulations using the N-body hardware integrator GRAPE. Applications address the origin of the spin of disk galaxies, the structure and kinematics of damped Lyman-alpha systems, and the origin of galaxy morphology and of galaxy scaling laws