Hello all A few weeks ago I built the BOINC based [EMAIL PROTECTED] distributed computing client for the PlayStation3 running YDL (Yellow Dog Linux). I have been testing it myself for a few days now and it appears to be working properly and its performance isn't too bad for an "alpha" release.
On the Cell, the FFT computation, which is the computationally intensive part of the SETI app, is done on the SPEs while the rest is done on the PPE. Moreover, it runs two copies of the SETI app simultaneously i.e. pretends that the Cell is a dual core system. I found this combination to be an "optimal" choice for now, because in this manner the app utilizes the fact that the PPE can run two threads simultaneously. Of course, in this implementation, each copy of the app only uses 3 SPEs for the FFT computation. >From what I can tell the performance of this Cell app, on average, is not bad. It is competes well with high-end Pentiums, Xeons, etc. but not as well with the very recent offerings from Intel, i.e. C2Ds, new Xeons, etc. Moreover, its performance varies tremendously on the type of work unit it gets. Thats why I need a lot more performance data to understand problem spots, for further improving it. If you do decide to run it on your PS3 running Linux, please do join the [EMAIL PROTECTED] team, so I can keep track of how its doing. Thanks. You can download the PS3/Cell [EMAIL PROTECTED] app from here: http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/~gkhanna/sah-cell.tar.gz Instructions on how to run it (using an anonymous platform) are here: 1) Unzip and untar the downloaded file using "tar zxvf sah-cell.tar.gz". This will create a directory called "SaH". 2) Go to the SETI project website: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ and create an account, if you don't have one already. You'll need your "account key", which is a long string of alphanumeric characters that you usually receive in an email. 3) Now, change your working directory to SaH, by doing a "cd SaH" and then type the following: "./boinc_client -no_gui_rpc -attach_project http://setiathome.berkeley.edu df0d93e384a2700f70e0bc45a1b2c96c" Here is last string of alphanumeric characters is supposed to be YOUR account key. Please replace those with that. All this must be entered in a single line. 4) You should be all set. BOINC will contact the SETI servers and start getting work. You can check the progress in your SETI account online. 5) If you need to quit and restart, simply typing "./boinc_client -no_gui_rpc" should be enough. Feel free to drop me an email if you have any questions or have any trouble. Thanks. Good luck, Gaurav ----------------------------------------------- GAURAV KHANNA UMass Dartmouth, Physics (508) 910 6605 http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/ "Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright _______________________________________________ yellowdog-general mailing list [email protected] http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/mailman/listinfo/yellowdog-general HINT: to Google archives, try '<keywords> site:terrasoftsolutions.com'
