cellrox wrote:Well, I hardly consider 8 to be a large scale cluster.
That's odd - I counted 75 machines (at least) in the Sony cluster.
cellrox wrote: Yes, a couple have made clusters but those are the early adopters that IBM/Sony/Toshiba fund to get the momentum going. Of course, blades from IBM are the intended result of the momentum.
Well - of the two links I posted, Sony only partially funded one of the academia efforts - and that's because he begged them. The other was self funded.
Which leads me back to my point: the PS3 provides an entry into cluster computing that smaller institutions and even possibly individuals can afford. Don't get me wrong - there's obviously a lot of power in a Blade cluster. But - according to TerraSoft's website:
http://tinyurl.com/2un625a 14 QS22 BladeCenter Chassis is $170,800.00, while a 32 Node PS3 Cluster - with, according to TerraSoft: "a theoretical performance of greater than 5TF!" - is $42,250.00.
And that gets back to the discussion about what the Cell/B.E. is intended for. According to literature for the Cell from IBM: "The Cell Broadband Engine microprocessor was jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM and was designed to bridge the gap between conventional desktop processors and more specialized high-performance processors. Additionally, the processor has potential for use in digital distribution and entertainment systems—as well as for scientific imaging systems and physical simulations. Because game applications often feature highly parallel code for physical simulations and graphical realism, game developers require fast response times and a full-featured programming environment. The Cell Broadband Engine Architecture targets such applications by using a 64-bit multithreaded PowerPC® processor element (PPE) with two levels of globally coherent cache and eight synergistic processor elements (SPEs)."
(from:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs ... design_and )
Although the Cell is based on IBM's POWER architecture - and IBM designed a PowerXCell 8i server variant - it's important to note that in many ways, the Cell/B.E. is a continuation of the work Sony & Toshiba had started with the Emotion Engine (EE) for the PS2.
(If you haven't seen the specs for it, you should check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_Engine )
cellrox wrote:Making a PS3 is much easier than making a server ... trust me, I have been designing and working with servers since hmm .. 8 years for some BIG Tier 1 companies.
Actually - this Sony server is pretty much a PS3:
http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/ext/ZEGO/ZEGO.shtmlcellrox wrote:Anyway, thanks guys. My bad, I didnt realize this was not the forum for me.
No worries! It's been a fun discussion.
cellrox wrote:Have fun with your PS3's. I would buy one but I am scared I would spend my earnings and all the time playing games on it.
Or - you could buy a few to cluster with your Blade. They will interoperate like that under Linux.
Cheers,
Paul