http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192300840&subSection=All+Stories

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I've been beaten to it! Waaaaagh!

Actually, does anyone know if the RAM on the PS3 is upgradeable? I'm considering getting one, but 256MB is too little RAM to do any serious crunching...

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http://weblog.infoworld.com/tcdaily/archives/2006/11/more_than_a_toy.html

Make of it what you will...

If it can run Linux, it can probably BOINC. Though personally, I can't see the point of buying a new console and hacking it. It just seems a bit dumb.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/tcdaily/archives/2006/11/more_than_a_toy.html

They forgot to mention that Terra Soft will be shipping PS3s with YDL5 pre-installed. tsk tsk tsk

If it can run Linux, it can probably BOINC. Personally though, I can't see the point of buying a new console and hacking it.

It's just like any other CPU on BOINC - When you're done having fun shooting up aliens, put it to work finding aliens.

Considering it goes for $500, it's the cheapest, highest-performance, personal computer on the market.

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Although no UK price has been set yet, PS3 is expected to retail here at around £350 (20GB) and £425 (60GB). It's entirely possible to build a nice little PC to BOINC with in that price range. Besides, a console could have serious heat dissipation issues if it's running at 100% load for very long spells.

Just MHO.

I also found this video which shows the processor found in the PS3 (Cell) being used for medical imaging. It compares the time it takes for the Cell to build a 3D model to a conventional server-class CPU. I found the difference quite noticeable.

Here is the Wikipedia article on the Cell processor. A more in-depth discussion about the architectural features of the processor can be found here.

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Linux on the PS3 runs in a virtual environment, under a hypervisor.
This prevents you from hacking the PS3 or running cracked games.
There's no direct GPU access (ATM), you just draw into a virtual frame buffer.
No HW accelerated OpenGL, alas!

Running your own tasks on the Cell processor(s) is supported via library calls.
I guess that's a GO for porting seti to the PS3 :o)


Regards Hans

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if anyone interested in development of a client or let me know more details i can set it up on my site. http://swti.vivaxgroup.com i would support forum and downloads and everything thats needed. Please just mail me there on the site anton8@gmail.com or "swisseuro" on the site

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Actually, I was thinking of getting one and letting folks telnet in to do just that. I just don't think that 256MB RAM would be enough to support BOINC/SETI development and crunch on top of all the dev work.

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any Setimes..............

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli

Linux on the PS3 runs in a virtual environment, under a hypervisor.
This prevents you from hacking the PS3 or running cracked games.
There's no direct GPU access (ATM), you just draw into a virtual frame buffer.
No HW accelerated OpenGL, alas!

Running your own tasks on the Cell processor(s) is supported via library calls.
I guess that's a GO for porting seti to the PS3 :o)


Regards Hans

Does anyone have one of these.. and have linux on it... if so then what are the results displayed by doing

cat /proc/cpuinfo

does it show individual cpu's??... if it does then it may run a "process" on each of the cpu's.

we just need some coding to get them running.

Anyone with Fedora can try the Cell SDK/System Simulator. It simulates the cell on a blade server which is not exactly the same as how its configured in the PS3. I'm guessing all eight SPEs are available as compared to seven on the PS3 (six if you eliminate the one dedicated to the OS).

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Terra Soft is selling PS3+YDL5 starting Monday and the Mac/PPC Linux DVD starting in about two weeks.

I was rather hoping to wait to find out if the RAM could be boosted first, but I've been considering turning it into a cruncher/render box.

If/When I get one, I'll be making it available for compilation and optimization. (You're on your own if you're a gamer)

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Terra Soft is selling PS3+YDL5 starting Monday and the Mac/PPC Linux DVD starting in about two weeks.

I was rather hoping to wait to find out if the RAM could be boosted first, but I've been considering turning it into a cruncher/render box.

If/When I get one, I'll be making it available for compilation and optimization. (You're on your own if you're a gamer)

Cool :o)


I probably won't have any time to do serious work on the PS3 in the near future, but I'd definitely like to poke around a bit.

Regards Hans

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My Japanese is very rusty, but pictures are a universal language. From the looks of it, it seems that the RAM's non-upgradeable.

How many BOINC projects need more than 256MB?

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My Japanese is very rusty, but pictures are a universal language. From the looks of it, it seems that the RAM's non-upgradeable.

How many BOINC projects need more than 256MB?

I can't make out much on the pics, they're too lo-res to read the chip markings.
The RAMs seem to be in BGA packages, though. That rules out piggy-packing another bank of RAM.


I don't think there is a BOINC project requiring more than 256MB per thread.

Since the PS3 will be able to run several threads in parallel, things might get a bit cramped.

The theoretical max would be 9 threads (7 cell cores and 2 threads on the PPC), but I don't think it's a good idea to run a WU per cell core.

Regards Hans

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The RAMs seem to be in BGA packages, though. That rules out piggy-packing another bank of RAM.

I've been watching some of the disassembly videos and I didn't see any leads either. 256MB seems to be the [puny] limit.

I don't think there is a BOINC project requiring more than 256MB per thread.

Since the PS3 will be able to run several threads in parallel, things might get a bit cramped.

My sentiments exactly. The HD looked like it could be removed with moderate difficulty. A faster drive will help for swap space but not really help in the long run... :-/

The theoretical max would be 9 threads (7 cell cores and 2 threads on the PPC), but I don't think it's a good idea to run a WU per cell core.

That would have been the ideal. Maybe each core can work on a smaller subset of each WU?

I'll read the programming documentation a little more thoroughly, but from what I understand so far one has to program for the Cell itself in order to get the best performance out of it. Also the GPU seems to be off-limits for now, so that takes more wind out of the PS3/BOINC sails.

Meantime, I think I'll keep to the sidelines instead of the checkout lines.

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Why do you need more that 256mb for a cruncher? I have an old laptop crunching and it only has 256Mb of ram that is used by the OS(linux) and boinc running on a 40mb ramdisk.
Mem: 253452k total, 194356k used, 59096k free, 26656k buffers

There is still some space left... If the linux I run would be more optimized iam sure i could save another 70MB..

From my understanding of cell architecture, the best method for setiathome would be to have a single WU working on the whole machine. Each cell core has 256K of direct access memory which is enough to do an FFT, so when doing FFTs you would calculate 7 FFTs simultaneously on the cells.

Similarlt for Gaussian fitting and pulse finding, you would do seven power over time arrays simultaneously. Maybe 8 if you try to use the altivec unit simultaneously.

It would be an interesting exercise.

Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

If thats possible, this could very much be doable even with limited RAM. I would be highly interested in the crunch times...

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