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Cell to be used in world's fastest supercomputer at Los Alamos (Opteron-Cell hybrid)

K

Kleegamefan

K. LEE GAIDEN
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6112439.html

IBM has won a bid to build a supercomputer called Roadrunner that will include not just conventional Opteron chips but also the Cell processor used in the Sony Playstation, CNET News.com has learned.

The supercomputer, for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, will be the world's fastest machine and is designed to sustain a performance level of a "petaflop," or 1 quadrillion calculations per second, according to Pete Domenici, a Republican senator from New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons lab is located. Bidding for the system opened in May, when a Congressional subcommittee allocated $35 million for the first phase of the project, Domenici said.
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Roadrunner is emphasizing acceleration technologies. Coprocessor acceleration is intrinsic to that particular design," said John Gustafson, chief technology officer of start-up ClearSpeed Technologies, which sells the accelerator add-ons used in the Tsubame system. (Gustafson was referring to the Roadrunner project in general, not to IBM's winning bid, of which he disclaimed knowledge.)

IBM's BladeCenter systems are amenable to the hybrid approach. A single chassis can accommodate both general-purpose Opteron blade servers and Cell-based accelerator systems. The BladeCenter chassis includes a high-speed communications links among the servers, and one source said the blades will be used in Roadrunner.
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S

sonycowboy

Member
The CELL architecture is inherently well designed to support highly parallel, distributed applications that rely upon extremely fast floating point processing. This seems like a solid decision by Los Alamos to me.
 
G

GhaleonEB

Member
sonycowboy said:
WHY DON"T THEY USE THE X360 CPU??? ALLARD SEYS IT"S JUST AS GOOD.
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And you've been calling out "partisans" lately? That's two threads in a row I've read where YOU are the first (and only) one to bring up the 360. :lol :lol :lol
 
S

sonycowboy

Member
GhaleonEB said:
And you've been calling out "partisans" lately? That's two threads in a row I've read where YOU are the first (and only) one to bring up the 360. :lol :lol :lol
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This article has absolutely nothing to do with the 360 (or the PS3 for that matter). It's about CPU's.

Seriously, it was a sad little joke in a thread that's not about games or systems. I'll edit it out to maintain my neutral status.
 
N

Nvidia

Banned
GhaleonEB said:
And you've been calling out "partisans" lately? That's two threads in a row I've read where YOU are the first (and only) one to bring up the 360. :lol :lol :lol
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xbox 360 is white with a green x :/
 
DCharlie

DCharlie

Banned
Seriously, it was a sad little joke in a thread that's not about games or systems. I'll edit it out to maintain my neutral status.
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seriously, what IS going on with you?

the PS3 shock had a calming effect, but in the run up to TGS, you're as mad as hatter!

Is it the early juice of sweet expected victory that's making you drunk... drunk with power??
 
H

hukasmokincaterpillar

Member
Its pretty cool to think 15-20 years ago no one would probably have believed videogame R&D (of all things) would end up as one of the major forces driving silicon engineering and advancement today.
 
davepoobond

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
hukasmokincaterpillar said:
Its pretty cool to think 15-20 years ago no one would probably have believed videogame R&D (of all things) would end up as one of the major forces driving silicon engineering and advancement today.
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i dont think Cell is purely videogame R&D....
 
K

Kapsama

Member
so is it true that microsoft made president bush invade iraq so that sony couldn't repeat their missile shenanigans?
 
MMaRsu

MMaRsu

Banned
Just the same hype train with that stuff years ago about Ps2 processor beeing used for nuclear rockets and rocket science ...
 
C

cartman414

Member
davepoobond said:
i dont think Cell is purely videogame R&D....
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QFT. Really, you could quite possibly get as much gaming punch out of a less powerful but more streamlined CPU. And I'd be saying this regardless of who was doing it.
 
mckmas8808

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
MMaRsu said:
Just the same hype train with that stuff years ago about Ps2 processor beeing used for nuclear rockets and rocket science ...
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:lol :lol :lol

Only if you knew my child. You have no (0%) clue what you are talking about.
 
H

hukasmokincaterpillar

Member
cartman414 said:
Really, you could quite possibly get as much gaming punch out of a less powerful but more streamlined CPU. And I'd be saying this regardless of who was doing it.
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You said this in another thread that got locked but I was curious what your reasoning behind it was. Outside of the chip being conducive to other spaces besides gaming?
 
C

cartman414

Member
hukasmokincaterpillar said:
You said this in another thread that got locked but I was curious what your reasoning behind it was. Outside of the chip being conducive to other spaces besides gaming?
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That's what I was going to say right before the thread got locked. After which I threw a little hissyfit and created another thread because of that, which I'm not proud of.

But anyways, yeah, they're really going to have to succeed at integrating Cell into more machines to seriously justify the added cost of the chip.
 
H

hukasmokincaterpillar

Member
cartman414 said:
But anyways, yeah, they're really going to have to succeed at integrating Cell into more machines to seriously justify the added cost of the chip.
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"Justifying costs" from Sony's viewpoint could be open to plenty of intrepetation I suppose. But I don't think Cell's valid (and potential) applications outside of gaming has negated its considerable application (and potential) for gaming. "More streamlined" is an interesting phrase to use when arguing against its design though. If anything thats exactly what the CBE architecture is built on considering the transistor budget & power draw to performance ratio.
 
R

Ryudo

My opinion? USED.
Pitty it isnt a kentfield - cell hybrid, now that would be even more tasty.

In any sense the clock is ticking.
 
C

cartman414

Member
hukasmokincaterpillar said:
"Justifying costs" from Sony's viewpoint could be open to plenty of intrepetation I suppose. But I don't think Cell's valid (and potential) applications outside of gaming has negated its considerable application (and potential) for gaming. "More streamlined" is an interesting phrase to use when arguing against its design though. If anything thats exactly what the CBE architecture is built on considering the transistor budget & power draw to performance ratio.
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I realize what you're saying, and I'm not suggesting that Cell's potential applications outside of gaming have negated its potential within gaming. I'm just saying that without any of those ulterior motives behind the Cell processor, Sony and the rest of us would have likely been just as well served with a more streamlined, yet potentially as powerful processor for ultimately less money on various fronts. So basically my side of the argument is that if a reasonable number of developers are able to successfully use all of Cell's cores and whatnot, and Cell is successfully integrated into other devices, thereby prompting bigger mass production and a subsequent reduction in manufacturing costs, then hey, great. If those goals aren't quite met, then we have more of a needlessly complicated and proprietary CPU situation that added unnecessary cost to a purportedly mainstream gaming console..

I'm not trying to sound all doom and gloom here. It's just that the Cell is one of those reasons that the PS3 will be so very spendy, so basically, it has a whole lot to live up to.
 
X

X26

Banned
PS2 - Saddam used it to fire missiles
PS3 - U.S.A uses it to make nukes
PS4 - Kane and Kodos uses it to finally put an end to earth?

kang.gif
 
W

Wollan

Member
They should have added 'Official caretaker of US nuclear missiles' on the side with the rest of the logos.
 
davepoobond

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
cartman414 said:
I realize what you're saying, and I'm not suggesting that Cell's potential applications outside of gaming have negated its potential within gaming. I'm just saying that without any of those ulterior motives behind the Cell processor, Sony and the rest of us would have likely been just as well served with a more streamlined, yet potentially as powerful processor for ultimately less money on various fronts. So basically my side of the argument is that if a reasonable number of developers are able to successfully use all of Cell's cores and whatnot, and Cell is successfully integrated into other devices, thereby prompting bigger mass production and a subsequent reduction in manufacturing costs, then hey, great. If those goals aren't quite met, then we have more of a needlessly complicated and proprietary CPU situation that added unnecessary cost to a purportedly mainstream gaming console..

I'm not trying to sound all doom and gloom here. It's just that the Cell is one of those reasons that the PS3 will be so very spendy, so basically, it has a whole lot to live up to.
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i agree with you. but cell is being used for a reason...it costs more than a regular processor would have costed them, so they obviously have plans for using the ps3 for alterior motives other than gaming =p

like rendering 52 mpeg movies at the same time.
 
Z

Zaptruder

Banned
cartman414 said:
I realize what you're saying, and I'm not suggesting that Cell's potential applications outside of gaming have negated its potential within gaming. I'm just saying that without any of those ulterior motives behind the Cell processor, Sony and the rest of us would have likely been just as well served with a more streamlined, yet potentially as powerful processor for ultimately less money on various fronts. So basically my side of the argument is that if a reasonable number of developers are able to successfully use all of Cell's cores and whatnot, and Cell is successfully integrated into other devices, thereby prompting bigger mass production and a subsequent reduction in manufacturing costs, then hey, great. If those goals aren't quite met, then we have more of a needlessly complicated and proprietary CPU situation that added unnecessary cost to a purportedly mainstream gaming console..

I'm not trying to sound all doom and gloom here. It's just that the Cell is one of those reasons that the PS3 will be so very spendy, so basically, it has a whole lot to live up to.
Click to expand...

At least from the perspective of supercomputers, CELL is an incredibly cost effective source of computing power...

the current supercomputer record holders are what... 130Tflops or some such? Those are also multi multi million dollar systems, and if the CELL hybrid super computer is built as the article states, it'll be a magnitude increase in power on everything before it, without costing much more, if at all.
 
Red Scarlet

Red Scarlet

Member
Tieno said:
Lets build 35million dollar computers to play chess! Awesome!
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Well, I'm not really a computer person, so that's the first thing that came to mind to use it for.
And I'm sure there's been stuff made that's extremely expensive and even more useless than what I posted.

So why not? :)
 
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