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IBM's Cell Processor — Not Just for PS3 Anymore
TechFreep writes to tell us that IBM has released a new line of QS20 Blade Servers based on the processor they developed for the Playstation 3. From the article: "Today IBM announced a new line of high-powered QS20 Blade Servers intended for use in seismic research, encryption, digital image rendering and military surveillance applications. Each QS20 will include two nine-cored Cell Processors clocked at 3.2Ghz apiece, which were developed along with Sony and Toshiba for Sony's upcoming Playstation 3 console. As Playstation 3 isn't scheduled for release until November, the QS20 will mark the first application in which the highly-touted Cell will be available to consumers."
Aint that the truth. The damn things aren't even being built yet.
Not necessarily about this announcement of course as most of us have seen it coming for some time. However, the concept of the core processor is quite strong and I think that it will play an important role in computing in the future.
h tml
A little tid bit about all that: http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell0_v2.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
It's not just that I hate this word, but what has it got to do with these blade servers? Are they edible?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Just junk food for thought...
Maybe take a peek at the Wiki entry about the cell processor for a good background of what it is capable of.
Neutiquam erro
I think that stating that the Cell was "developed for PS3" is misleading. The processor, while certainly earmarked for the PS3, was designed all along to go into a full range of computing devices, PS3 was just the most visible (and likely to ship the most units initially). Saying it the other way makes it sound like the chip was developed exclusively for the PS3 and IBM is "just finding uses for it", which is not the case.
I'm not a major corporation but I could order a server from Dell and they would ship it to me. That's consumer enough for me.
Nope. It was concieved as a component for massively parallel processing, but using it in the playstation was the only way to get the volume production that I need to get the kind of reliability I want for my nuclear simulations.
This chip will be to the Pentium what the Pentium is to the 6502 - once the tool chain is understood by software designers. Actually, better, because Cell architecture uses way less gates than pipelining for way more throughput at the same clock speed and feature size. Hell, I might even retire my Sun Niagras.
Sure it won't run Windows very well, but hell, Windows doesn't run very well anyway, and I Don't Care (TM).
Yes, it does run Linux. What about NetBSD?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
IBM has oodles of fab capacity. Don't forget Apple has dropped off the queue.
Apple was one of IBM's smallest consumers of PowerPC chips, and always was. The embedded and entertainment market dominates their "queue", and is one of the main reasons the PowerPC series never pushed as hard clock-wise as Intel does; the embedded market sees higher clock speeds as greater power consumption/heat dissipation and more (electronic and thermal) design challenges. When Apple took a hike, IBM didn't shed any tears, and said as much.
I don't have any specific numbers, but I believe Apple's purchases were under 5% of total production. You may say "well, going with Intel was a REALLY stupid idea!" Wrong- before, Apple was "the little fish using embedded-market processors for consumer computers", and the goals didn't match. Now, they're using chips specifically targeted to the markets Apple wants to be in.
Please help metamoderate.
I think you were just being a dumbass, but in case you weren't... according to this article about the same announcement, IBM is recommending Fedora Core as the operating system to use. So yes, linux does run on it.
Regards,
Steve
IBM already has a CMP. Both AMD and Intel will soon have CMPs. Here, CMP does not mean duo-core; CMP means at least 4 cores.
The window of opportunity for Sun has now closed.
What is ingenious about IBM is the fact that IBM is essentially using the R&D in its consumer-electronics division (that builds processors for game consoles and other toys) to advance R&D in the business-oriented high-performance-processor/high-end-server division. Building electronics for toys has actually strengthened non-toy products.
When will Mattel and Hasbro start selling their own supercomputers?
This has always been the plan and was a guiding principal in the Cell's design. Amortize the cost of a very usefull (To federal customers) chip over the estimated 40-60M playstations that will use a very similar (But not identical) design. From the beginning the chip was dual-purpose designed with very high speed interconnects and protocols for massive parallel-ism.
$29/chip x 64k chips = more ops per buck than ever - thanks to the world's gamers...
The problem for both PS3 and the NSA, etc is IBM's 10-20% yields. PS3 for Christmas? They better get up the curve fast...
BTW - Anyone remember back to when the Soviets used to buy up Ataris and canabilize their chips for sonobouys?
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
if they're moving from 8-core 3.2 GHz targets to 9-core 3.2 GHz targets.
I think it's more likely a misstatement in the article than an actual change in what's being produced.
The Cells being produced for the PS3 have one primary processor (PPE) and eight secondary processors (SPE's)--only seven of which need to be functional at 2.8GHz for it to meet Sony's specs--for a total of 9 (or 8 for PS3) 'processors'. Not quite the same thing as 'cores' in the traditional sense of the word.
It's possible that these chips for these new servers are identical on silicon to the PS3 chips, only IBM will not pass them unless all 8 SPE's are functional at the full 3.2GHz clock rate.
Kind of like 386DX vs. 386SX -- instead of throwing away the DX chips that had defective math coprocessors, Intel simply burned out the traces, screened a different label on them, and sold them at discount prices.
The Potential of Science With the Cell Processor
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/
It reference a second article:
Researchers Analyze HPC Potential of Cell Processor
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/671376.html/
This discusses research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on using the STI Cell processor for scientific computing. From the article quoting the LBL paper:
"Overall results demonstrate the tremendous potential of the Cell architecture for scientific computations in terms of both raw performance and power efficiency,"
and
"We also conclude that Cell's heterogeneous multi-core implementation is inherently better suited to the HPC environment than homogeneous commodity multi-core processors."
The paper went on to say that while the Cell processor was designed for single-precision 32-bit floating performance but with some simple changes to the design it could be optimized for double precision 64-bit floating performance.
This makes a lot of sense if this is the same Cell processor that IBM is using in their blade servers.
Really cheap, really fast 9 core processors!
An interesting read.
RLH