Experiments in Scientific Computation on the PlayStation 3
Sevre, Erik O.D.; Christiansen, Monica D.; Broten, Matt; Wang, Shuo M.;
Yuen, David A.
Dept. of Geology and Geophysics and Minnesota Supercomputing Institute,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, U.S.A.
Submitted to Visual Geosciences, May, 2008.
Abstract
The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) offers the computational power of a parallel processor at low cost, which
makes it a great starter unit for development in parallel programming. To explore the capabilities of the unit,
we took a simple ray tracing program and extended it to render triangulated height field data across the PS3’s
6 SPUs (synergistic processing units). We also implemented the heat averaging equation as a precursor to
CFD analysis on the PS3. In our studies, we found the Cell engine in the PS3 to be a powerful machine,
however great care must be taken while developing because its unique platform calls for many levels of
optimization to ensure efficiency.
1. Introduction
In the past two years, there has been a lot of discussion about the new Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE)
microprocessor. The simple reason for this is that parallelized architectures, such as the Cell, are the future of
scientific computation. This is because they enable a higher volume of calculations to be performed.
However, due to the cost of building a Cell computer, simply constructing a complete system for use as a test
bed is impractical. The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3), on the other hand, provides an ideal environment to start
developing with its native support for the Yellow Dog Linux operating system. Costing only $600, the PS3
Cell provides 218 Gflops of processing power that can be utilized with a relatively quick and simple
installation.
We wanted to see if the Cell processor lived up to the advertised capabilities. However, we needed to
consider the limitations of the PS3 Cell: it has very limited memory, it has no access to the GPU, and it
performs better using s