HR: 1340h
AN: U33A-0802 [Abstracts]
TI: PS3 CELL Development for Scientific Computation and Research
AU: * Christiansen, M
EM: monica.christiansen@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: * Christiansen, M
EM: monica.christiansen@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, 117 Pleasant Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Sevre, E
EM: esevre@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Sevre, E
EM: esevre@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, 117 Pleasant Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Wang, S M
EM: shwang1386@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Wang, S M
EM: shwang1386@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, 117 Pleasant Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Yuen, D A
EM: daveyuen@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Yuen, D A
EM: daveyuen@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, 117 Pleasant Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Liu, S
EM: spring.yingch@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Liu, S
EM: spring.yingch@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, 117 Pleasant Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Lyness, M D
EM: martin.lyness@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Lyness, M D
EM: martin.lyness@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, 117 Pleasant Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Broten, M
EM: mbroten@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Department of Geology and Geophysics, 310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Broten, M
EM: mbroten@gmail.com
AF: University of Minnesota, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, 117 Pleasant Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AB:
The Cell processor is one of the most powerful processors on the market, and researchers in the earth sciences
may find its parallel architecture to be very useful. A cell processor, with 7 cores, can easily be obtained for
experimentation by purchasing a PlayStation 3 (PS3) and installing linux and the IBM SDK. Each core of the PS3
is capable of 25 GFLOPS giving a potential limit of 150 GFLOPS when using all 6 SPUs (synergistic processing
units) by using vectorized algorithms.
We have used the Cell's computational power to create a program which takes simulated tsunami datasets,
parses them, and returns a colorized height field image using ray casting techniques. As expected, the time
required to create an image is inversely proportional to the number of SPUs used. We believe that this trend will
continue when multiple PS3s are chained using OpenMP functionality and are in the process of researching this.
By using the Cell to visualize tsunami data, we have found that its greatest feature is its power. This fact entwines
well with the needs of the scientific community where the limiting factor is time. Any algorithm, such as the heat
equation, that can be subdivided into multiple parts can take advantage of the PS3 Cell's ability to split the
computations across the 6 SPUs reducing required run time by one sixth. Further vectorization of the code can
allow for 4 simultanious floating point operations by using the SIMD (single instruction multiple data) capabilities
of the SPU increasing efficiency 24 times.
UR: http://webis.msi.umn.edu/wiki/index.php/Dave_Yuen%27s_Group:PS3
DE: 0500 COMPUTATIONAL GEOPHYSICS (3200, 3252, 7833)
DE: 0594 Instruments and techniques
DE: 3200 MATHEMATICAL GEOPHYSICS (0500, 4400, 7833)
DE: 3252 Spatial analysis (0500)
DE: 7833 Mathematical and numerical techniques (0500, 3200)
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting