[astro] Re: ps3 port

[Gaurav Khanna]

Hi all

Indeed, if there is something as simple as an integral to SPU parallelize,
as the most computationally intensive part, that would be very easy to do.

I'm curious to hear more. Thanks.

Regards
Gaurav

On Wed, January 9, 2008 12:53 pm, Travis Desell wrote:
> Hi Guarav and Everybody,
>
> I'm forwarding this message to our research group because I think this
> could be interesting.  We already know that the astronomy code is easily
> parallelizable, so iIthink it has a lot to gain from being used on the
> cell.  I'm not sure if we could parallelize the likelihood calculation
> due to memory restrictions on the PPUs (if i remember correctly they
> only allow 256KB memory), however the integral (which is the more
> expensive part anyways) could be easily split up because it only needs
> to know the min/max/step for each dimension.  Also, if the integral
> calculation could take advantage of the vector math processing on the
> PPUs, numbers could really be crunched fast.
>
> Does anyone else have any thoughts about this?
>
> --Travis
>
>
> Gaurav Khanna wrote:
>> Hi Travis,
>>
>> I can help investigate the feasibility of MilkyWayHome for the PS3/Cell
>> if
>> you are interested. I'll need info on what & how the app is actually
>> computing and  I'll also probably need to see snippets of the source
>> code
>> where the heavy lifting is being done ..
>>
>> Essentially, we need to investigate if SPU based parallelization would
>> yield significant gain in the app's performance and what it would take
>> to
>> implement it. And that largely depends on how & what data would have to
>> move from the main memory to the SPU local-store ..
>>
>> Let me know,
>> Gaurav
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------
>>
>> GAURAV KHANNA
>> UMass Dartmouth, Physics
>> (508) 910 6605
>> http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/
>>
>> "Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright
>>
>>
>>
>>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Travis Desell
> <deselt @ cs.rpi.edu>
> 1-518-878-7424
> Worldwide Computing Laboratory ( http://wcl.cs.rpi.edu/ )
> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180, USA
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>


-----------------------------------------------

GAURAV KHANNA
UMass Dartmouth, Physics
(508) 910 6605
http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/

"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright