Early Experiences with Algorithm Optimizations on Clusters of Playstation 3´s

Author

Linderman, Richard

Author_Institution

Inf. Directorate, US Air Force Res. Lab., Rome, NY

fYear

2008

fDate

14-17 July 2008

Firstpage

468

Lastpage

471

Abstract

A 50 TeraFLOPS cluster of Playstation 3s^reg (PS3) is being built at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate (AFRL/RI) in Rome, NY as an High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) effort to provide early access to the IBM Cell Broadband engine chip technology included in the low priced commodity gaming consoles. A heterogeneous cluster with powerful subcluster headnodes is used to balance the architecture in light of PS3 memory and input/output constraints. Several cases studies have shown that 30-70% of the 153 GFLOPS peak performance of these nodes can be sustained on problems of Department of Defense (DoD) interest. Notable power efficiency approaching 1 GFLOPS/Watt has also been observed.

Keywords

computer games; optimisation; remote consoles; workstation clusters; Department of Defense; High Performance Computing Modernization Program; IBM Cell Broadband engine chip technology; Playstation 3; TeraFLOPS cluster; algorithm optimizations; gaming consoles; Bandwidth; Clustering algorithms; Computer architecture; Costs; Engines; Ethernet networks; High performance computing; Laboratories; Multicore processing; Throughput;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

DoD HPCMP Users Group Conference, 2008. DOD HPCMP UGC

Conference_Location

Seattle, WA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3323-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/DoD.HPCMP.UGC.2008.59

Filename

4755910