Frank, thanks for your comments ...
On 11/15/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Noah yan wrote: > it is well known that Cell and XBox CPU are all powerpc ISA. Cell is > gaining popularity in not only the gaming computing, but in others, > such as the coming road-runner, a hybrid opteron-cell supercomputer; > terra soft is building the first cell-based supercomputer, IBM is > selling cell blade and workstation and mercury already has cell board > about one year ago. also tons of documents available from IBM web, > including both SDK and full-system cell simulator. We've had a "check this out" thread on Cell, I actually think it was on opensolaris-discuss, about at the time when IBM released the first specs for Cell. More than a year ago ... But then, all the hype about Cell forgets one important thing: From the point of view of the operating system kernel, it's just a single-core PPC. The distinguishing feature of Cell, the vector unit, doesn't help an OS core at all (though you could speculate using it for such mundane tasks as block copy/clear or maybe even something elaborate as data compression and encryption). Within "Sun Marketing terms", you might call the Cell and the Niagara both chips for "throughput computing", but while Niagara focuses on integer parallelism Cell goes for FPU parallelism/vectorization. Complementary approaches, and a hybrid Niagara/Cell sounds technically fascinating; but as far as OS porting and running generic applications on it goes, the Cell is "just a plain old PPC CPU". Its vector capabilities would benefit generic applications / OS kernels only in very few areas.
that creates challenge to os (and compiler): how to make full power of this special hardware for the application instead of just considering it a plain PPC CPU (for cell, CPU+GPU multicore, and hybrid one). I believe there must some interesting work here in both the comiler and the os. The compiler knows the applications, but not the hardware; the os knows the hardware, but not the apps. the compiler could give the os more hints on how to schedule the app thread on hardware than just a a flat instruction sequence. just some immature thoughts and it is way out of the scope of this thread. Noah
> > it is suprising that here are left far behind what happens outside of > solaris. it is not good sign. OS research is mostly driven by hardware > architecture, Cell seems represents the trends of future > microprocessor (CPU+GPU on a chip) architecutre, also see what AMD is > doing in fusion and Torrenza. All the "use graphics cards as vector daughter boards" (see Nvidia's latest announcements for the nv8800 as well) methods are very interesting for HPC, and in that aspect highly-parallel vector units (such as Cell, such as any multi-pipeline floating-point vector shader graphics card) create a revival of the "floating point coprocessor". It's the HPC hype of the day. I'll believe it once such a box enters the top500. None of that reduces the "coolness" factor, though. Yes, I'd like a PS3 running Solaris, it'd be really cool - not its temperature, though :) FrankH. > > before a powerpc solaris port is available, it does not make sense > doing cell port at all, which will start powerpc port anyway. > > Noah > > On 11/15/06, Dennis Clarke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> > ken mays wrote: >> >> OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 >> >> >> >> This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: >> >> >> >> 1. Stable hardware platform >> >> 2. Simplied device driver support >> >> 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, >> >> Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) >> >> 4. Global distribution >> >> 5. Very Large developer community >> >> 6. Large financial backing >> >> >> >> An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the >> >> advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a >> portable >> >> multi-purpose platform. >> >> >> >> Something to think about, >> > >> > Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? >> > Are you intending to lead that project ? >> >> I think it may just be enthusiasm run rampant. Which is perfectly cool. >> The cell processor has not even seen the light of day yet and I doubt that >> there is a pile of documentation available on it in any case. Yes it looks >> very fast and it is a very good thing that someone wakes up in the morning >> and looks at it and says "we have to get OpenSolaris ported to that >> puppy!". >> >> Great enthusiasm. >> >> Just think what the other extreme could be eh ? >> >> -- >> Dennis Clarke >> >> _______________________________________________ >> opensolaris-discuss mailing list >> opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org >> > _______________________________________________ > opensolaris-discuss mailing list > opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- If anything's worth doing, do it with all your heart. The Buddha Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. Confucius Whatever you do, do it with all your heart. St.Paul, Col 3:23 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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