PS3/CELL and BOINC/SETI

soooo 1.8 terraflops of cpu power is pretty impressive. Anyone think itll be possible to port boinc or seti over to the new hardware? And if so what do you think the performance will be?

From what I've read, they're already working very hard on a Linux kernel for the Cell processor. But it isn't all GHz's and G/Tflops you should look at, cache and RAM are also important factors... I dont know how much RAM the PS3 will get, and how much cache the Cell processor has, but it sure is interesting. From what I've heard, the XBOX 360 'only' gets 1 Tflops.

I'm not sure which one to buy, but both machines are certainly worth the money, they're so much faster than the average affordable PC at the moment.
A decent graphics card for a PC costs around 250 - 300 euro's, the Xbox360 will cost around 300 - 350 euro's

[edit on 6-10-2005 by Zion Mainframe]

General
Controller Bluetooth Wireless
Form Factor Console
Graphics Processor and Memory
Embedded Video Memory 0MB
Graphics Processor RSX "Reality Synthesizer"
Graphics Core Clock Speed 550MHz
System Memory 256MB XDR
Vector Units 1 VMX vector unit per core
System Memory Bandwith 22.4GB/s, RSX 20GB/s (write)/15GB/s (read), SB 2.5GB/s (write)/ 2.5GB/s (read)
Shaders 100 Billion Shader Operations/s
Video Memory 256MB
Product Identification
Manufacturer Sony
Product Line Sony PlayStation 3
Video Output
Resolution 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
Expansion and Connectivity
Digital Media Formats Compatible with CR-ROM, CDR+W, DVD, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R
Game Media Format Blu-ray BD-ROM
Other I/O Connectors Ethernet (RJ45), 6 USB 2.0, CF Slot (Type I, II), SD Slot (Regular, Compact), Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, 1 x Optical Audio
Controller Ports Supports up to 7 Bluetooth Controllers
Plug and Play Storage 2.5in Removable Hard Drive (Unkown Size)
Standard AV Output Connectors 2 x HDMI, 1 x AV
Integrated Communications 802.11 B/G Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0
Processor
Processor Core Spec 1 Core, 7 x SPE 3.2GHz (256KB SRAM per SPE), 7 x 128b 128 SIMD GPRs
Marketing Performance Measurement 2.18 TFLOPs
Processor Clock Speed 3.2GHz
L2 Cache 512KB L2 cache, 256KB per SPE
Processor Cell processor
Integrated Devices
Built-in Features Backward Compatible with PlayStation 2, Stands Vertically or Horizontally
System Memory
Memory Bandwidth 25.6GB/s main memory bandwidth, 22.4GB/s video memory bandwidth
Storage
Media Drive Blue-Ray BD-ROM
Audio
Surround Sound Multichannel Output (software driven)


Im not sure how the programs utilize cache or if it would be possible to utilize the GPU's proccessing power. So i just posted the whole specs for you. Got em off gamespot.com

hehe, well I don't know that much about hardware, but I've read on several fora, that the more cache the better (for BOINC). The Cell processor in the PS3 only has 512KB L2 cache, while the latest P4 630 - 660 have 2MB L2 cache (4x as much as the Cell).

Check out this discussion on the SETI forum: Cache is King, Pentium-M CPU is the fastest!!!

His Pentium-M (laptop!!) @ 1.6 GHz with 1MB L2 cache outperforms his Dual-processor (!!) P4 Extreme 3.2 GHz with 1 MB L2 cache. The Dual P4 shares the L2 cache between both processors.

So a laptop processor can outperform a dual-processor P4!! (at least with BOINC)

Oh well, I'm still gonna buy one anyway

[edit on 6-10-2005 by Zion Mainframe]

lol nice

ya im voting ps3 here. go over to gamespot and watch the killzone 2 trailer...talk about life like.

Originally posted by Civil44
lol nice

ya im voting ps3 here. go over to gamespot and watch the killzone 2 trailer...talk about life like.

That's the most impressive trailer, for sure. ...So far.

The PS3 won't have a Hard drive by default, that will be sold as an extra, but the good news is that the HD will come installed with Linux. The cell cpu is only 256 GFLOPS, but 1 SPE is used for redundancy, so it's only really 218 GFLOPS, and the gpu itself is 1.8 TFLOPS. So I guess it would be possible to run BOINC on PS3. That would be great performance.

I think with Seti@home Classic, it gave workunits worth about 2-4 TFLOPS of work.

For a really impressive tech demo of PS3, watch the Dr. Oc (from Spider-man 2) video.

well from what ive heard.. the cell will outperform any cpu by miles even a bord with 6 p4 would not be any faster ...

it is not the memory nor the system speed nor a single part thats most important

most ppol think.. well just 3, 4 ghz .. i got a p4 4ghz lol

it depends on the material they use for chips and bords on the code they programm and and and...

like 6-10 years ago they found a new material that made everything 100 times faster... meaning thay could make a chip with 100 times less power so a 10 mhz but they would still have the performance of 1 ghz but just produce the heat of a 10mhz (because the material used for the chips transfers data faster) (i doubt they started using the new material already as they mantioned they want it to replace normal electronice in the next 10 15 years) ...

some wild guess would be that a work unit that would take 8 hours should not take more than a few minutes..

ok maybe not if they add new calculations to make it slower lol

dont forget cell is a multi core processor (with 8 math units if u wish to call them that) ...

i wonder if they can use the rsx to do some calculation aswell then

its alo funny how ppl think the xbox360 chip is good...

well dont forget the xbox360 chip is made by IBM

but the cell chip was engeniered and produced by not just one not just 2 but three of the biggest companies

IBM SONY AND TOSHIBA

do you think cell will be not as good? ibm in not going to make a new chip (cell) thats slower than an already exicting chip (xbox chip)

the ps3 holds so much future technology

eg the blue ray (about 150 companies are waiting to produce blue ray)
the rsx and cell,well im not sure how good they are on there own, but together they are the bomb.

from the sony presentation (calculating the world map in realtime) having a chip that can calculate real physics, that can convert 12 movies at once... well this are all things a p4 would never be able to do..
the cell aint just a processor, it is so much in one... eg soundcard
the cell is able to create hunderts of thousands of audiochannels in dolby.. well ive never heared of a aoundcard that can do that stuff..

cell will be used in military areas .. like sonar ... like boinc, mobile phones, watches etc.. tell me one that would not like to have a supercomputer as big as an apartment (and if its just 1 or 2 rooms) in the size of ur eye


[edit on 16-12-2005 by Monstars99]

www.gearlive.com...

update on a seti to PS3 port. For the record way back when i started this thread....I called this 100%