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Boost UltraSPARC T1 Floating Point w/ a Graphics Card?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the computed-outside-of-the-box dept.

alxtoth asks: "All over the web, Sun's UltraSPARC T1 is described as 'not fit for floating point calculations'. Somebody has benchmarked it for HPC applications, and got results that weren't that bad. What if one of the threads could do the floating point in the GPU, as suggested here? Even if the factory setup does not expect an video card, could you insert a low profile PCI-E video card, boot Ubuntu and expect decent performance?"

2 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Probably, but it's not an optimal solution by the_humeister · · Score: 4, Informative

    Especially since current GPUs don't implement double-precision floating point math. Heh, in that vein you could add a dual Opteron single-board computer into one of the expansion slots...

  2. Yes you can.. maybe not on SPARC though.. by NekoXP · · Score: 5, Informative

    We produce an Open Firmware solution which includes an x86 emulator to bootstrap x86 hardware, specifically graphics cards and the like.

    PowerPC boards, PC graphics chips with x86 BIOS, no driver edits required on the OS side.. it is there like it would be on a PC.

    http://metadistribution.org/blog/Blog/78A3C88E-1CE 7-45B8-9C79-420134DD9B8E.html
    http://www.genesippc.com/