Currently there are 2 ways to "run" cell: First way is to run cell as a CPU -- the OS runs on the PPEs and the tasks (similar to threads) runs on the SPEs. Note that there are lots of limitations on what the tasks can do, and also note that the tasks do not have the ability to directly address the main memory.
There is a port of OpenSolaris for PPC, and as PPEs implement the PPC ISA, only minor work is needed to run OpenSolaris on Cell or PS3. The second way is to use Cell processors on an extension card, and this is similar to a graphics card running GPGPU programs. However, why use Cell when a graphics card can do what you want at a cheaper price and offer better performance?? The latest AMD (ie. ATi ) RV770 card can get you 1.2 TFLOPs of single precision or 200 GFLOPs of double precision FP performance... the next generation RV790 card is rumored to have way more (680 GFLOPs) of double precision performance. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/09/1838216 Rayson On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Carlos Cardenas <carlos.cardenas at swri.org> wrote: > Has anyone done anything with Cell Processing and (Open)Solaris? > > I don't see anyone trying to port OpenSolaris to the Cell (like running on a > PS3 or anything) but I was > interested if anyone was using one of the following cards with OpenSolaris: > > http://www.mc.com/microsites/cell/ProductDetails.aspx?id=9434 > http://us.fixstars.com/products/gigaaccel/ > > If nothing else, is there any interest (within the community or within Sun) > in getting support for the Cell in OpenSolaris? > > I would like to use Cell in some R&D but don't want to run Linux if it's not > necessary. > > Carlos > _______________________________________________ > hpcdev-discuss mailing list > hpcdev-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/hpcdev-discuss >
