SC07 Birds of a Feather (BOF):
Unleashing the Power of the Cell Broadband Engine Processor for HPC
November 15, 2007
Reno, NV
Organizers:
- David A. Bader (Georgia Tech)
- Michael Perrone (IBM Research)
- Ashok Srinivasan (Florida State)
Abstract:
The Cell/B.E. is a heterogeneous multi-core processor, capable of over 200 gigaflops. This Birds-of-a-Feather includes discussion of techniques and tools that can enable HPC-applications to exploit this power:
- How can application developers get maximum performance through "heroic" programming efforts? We shall discuss programming tricks and algorithmic techniques for some important computational kernels, and open problems.
- What productivity tools are available? We shall discuss features of the Cell-SDK-3.0, performance tools, programming models, and developing applications using the PS3.
- Will a lightweight-OS be suitable for Cell? An embedded real-time Linux may help reduce the load on the PPU, and can be effective in the SPU-centric programming model which is typically used.
- How can the Cell/B.E. be used as an accelerator for traditional processors? We shall discuss the LANL Roadrunner, which uses Cell/B.E.-processors to augment Opterons, with the former handling the bulk of the computational workload.
Presentations:
