Cell Processor - Beyond a gaming processor

Found this link that is very intriguing.

Its suggests that a newer "low power" version of the cell processor is coming out. And the next best industry to make use of it .. will be in medicine. I think Folding@home proved the power of the PS3 in medical research ... but this blogger's suggestion that live medical devices like 3d CAT-scans, live interactive medical imaging .. will be the next big hit.

I thinks that's a great idea! When you think about it .. live 3D interaction is not too different than a hi-resolution FPS (first person shooter). Ignoring, of course, the data stream requirements. Which in this case is what would limit the use of a standard PS3 (digital CAT scans can already generate 6 Gigabytes / sec data streams ... ignoring the whole packet buffering issue .. that out-classes the PS3's 1000Base-T LAN connection).

Now think of the same CAT scanner connected to a custom box with two or three cell processors .. with a 10G network link. Haven't run the numbers .. but I'm pretty sure there's enough horse power there for a custom app to display and modify (read filter) what is being displayed. Imagine now a dynamic disease filter that identifies and highlights on the 3D image ... in real time.

Its a brave new world in interactive medicine!

Update:
Looks like there is plenty of motion in this direction:
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34085/118/ IBM Opens first cell research center on college campus.
http://news.soft32.com/mayo-clinic-and-ibm-to-improve-medical-research_5824.html Mayo Clinic and IBM to Improve Medical Research.

Toshiba puts a Cell chip in a laptop?

CNet is reporting on a "Toshiba Spurs Engine". Apparently they put an IBM Cell processor into a Toshiba Laptop.
Here's the link: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/video/0,139101587,49295004,00.htm

SPU-Medialib has Cell/PS3 optimized programs to accelerate media related content

Looks like a project called spu-medialib has a collection of media library code optimized for the Cell processor. This should allow MythTV to make full use of the Cell SPU units (the power behind the PS3).

Link is http://wiki.ps2dev.org/ps3:spu-medialib

Terra Soft uses PS3 for a Stereo Vision Setup in DARPA's Urban Challange

Yet another awesome use of PS3 cells. Terra Soft has built a stereo vision system based on the PS3.
Slashdot is reporting it was used in Axion Racing's entry to the DARPA Urban Challenge.

Links:
Terr Soft: http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/showcase/cellebration/axion/tss.shtml
Slashdot Discussion: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/30/161252
DARPA urban challenge: http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/

Folding@Home on the PS3

Check out the stats for the PS3 doing the Folding@Home project. Wow ..

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats

This is what I saw at 2:30pm on March 23, 2007

OS Type	Current TFLOPS*	Active CPUs	Total CPUs
Windows	151	159198	1624934
Mac OS X/PowerPC	7	8716	95341
Mac OS X/Intel	8	2716	7216
Linux	42	24971	215703
GPU	41	700	2188
PLAYSTATION®3	367	14971	15914
Total	616	211272	1961296

Riding The Multi-core Revolution Demo

Here is a long .. but very interesting presentation called "Riding the Multi-core Revolution Demo"
It discusses the trends of Parallel processing .. and multi core computing and the effects on software development.

Covered in the demo is a discussion of GPU use for specialized software computation (other than graphics)
It also mentions IBM's Cell processor use of specialized multi-cores .. talking about how to write scalable programs to make use of it.

about 32 mins into the Demo .. is the "16,000" chicken demo referenced earlier in the blog.
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/Riding%2520The%2520Multi-core%2520Revolution.html

48 Simultaneous SDTV streams decoded by Cell Processor

Finally found a reference to an old (2005) trade show demonstration .. where the cell processor decoded 48 SDTV MPEG-2 streams simultaneously! No I don't think this was done on a PS3 .. but it shows the power of the cell processor. HDTV is roughly 4 SDTV streams ... so you could infer 12 HDTV streams (maybe 10 to be safe) ... now thats PIP!

From the article:
"Toshiba demonstrated that its Cell microprocessor, jointly developed with the Sony Group and IBM Corp., can simultaneously decode 48 SDTV format MPEG-2 streams. At the COOL Chips VIII event held in Yokohama from April 20 to 22, 2005, the company showed a film demonstrating the decoding process"

Here is the article link: http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20050425/104149/

Linux Kernel 2.6.20 to add Playstation 3 support

It appears the 2.6.20 version of the Linux kernel about to be release will include a lot of PS3 enhancements.

According to this page the changes are made by Sony engineers.

Found from a this Slashdot post.
Here is a softpedia article on it.

Ah .. The power of cells

Found this great post off Slashdot.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197001130

Down in the article they talk about a new Petaflop supercomputer that IBM is building..
Read this quote and ask "Does this architecture sound familiar?"

"Roadrunner is the first rendering of a hybrid computing architecture: multiple heterogeneous cores with a multitier memory hierarchy. It's also built entirely out of commodity parts: AMD Opteron-based servers, Cell BE-based accelerators and Infiniband interconnect. Standard processing (e.g., file system I/O) will be handled by Opteron processors, while more mathematically and CPU-intensive elements will be directed to the Cell BE processors."

Did you catch the pool of cell processors directed by a master (and separate standard) processor?

I guess that makes the PS3 a "proof of concept" super-computer.

"How Stuff Works" on the PS3

Found a nice page on how the PS3 works at "How Stuff Works".
Its http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/playstation-three.htm.

It has some nice pictures of the processor itself, with neat eye candy when discussing the PS3 GPU RSX "Reality Synthesize". You should check it out .. if nothing else but to seen the impressive graphics.

Keep in mind that until Sony or a third party creates libraries optimized for the cell (and drivers for the GPU) ... the Linux side of life won't be all that impressive. This is why I believe the currently working MythTV frontends on PS3 are a little slow / choppy. Frame buffering .. although useful as an easy first port .. is hardly efficient.

16,000 chickens simulated on one cell

The link: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan07/4837
From IEEE Spectrum - January 2007 (Pages 40 - 43).

IEEE Spectrum has a great article about the problems programmers have when trying to create parallel processing algorithms. But in the article they talk about a simulation done on a single cell processor .. where (in real-time) 16,000 chicken's actions were simulated .. key quote from the article:

"Imagine the biggest flock of virtual fowl ever assembled. Each chicken is controlled by a simple artificial intelligence program, operating according to a handful of rules. Each chicken wants to move toward the rooster but must avoid collisions with other chickens, fences, and the barn. To do so, each one must constantly check the position of its nearest neighbors and other objects in its environment and then decide how to move.
If that doesn’t sound all that impressive to you, consider this: all 16 000 of those faux chickens are doing this maneuvering at the same time on a single Cell microprocessor. It is a chore that would tax a rack full of conventional servers." (Spectrum Jan 2007 page 41)

Update:
Here is a link to a presentation where the "16,000 chicken" program is run and explained. You have to go about 32mins into the video to hit the chicken demo part.
http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/Riding%2520The%2520Multi-core%2520Revolution.html

An introduction to Linux on the PlayStation 3 by IBM

This Slashdot article references a great article by IBM on Cell processor programming.

Its called "An introduction to Linux on the PlayStation 3" if the link doesn't work its http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-linuxps3-1/

Enjoy.

What is a "Cell" Processor

Probably the trickiest concept when comparing the Tri-Core XBox 360 to the PS3 (technically a single core) processor is understanding the "Cell" processors that the PS3 uses. Technically the PS3 is a High speed PPC processor with 8 Cell co-processors .. of which 6 are available for general gaming use. (I don't have the link, and will dig it up .. but I read one cell is dedicated to the Sony OS and the other is a "spare" used to take the place of the other 7 cells should a defect occur).

Wikipedia has a good overview of the cell processor with a picture of the die. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)).

Here is an a great overview document explaining the cell architecture by a guy named Nicholas Blachford. Its http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell0_v2.html

IBM Research page has two pages discussing the broadband cell processor and its architecture.

• http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.arch.innovation.html
• http://www-03.ibm.com/chips/power/splash/cell/