Hi folks!

I was just looking at this page:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/breaking-ps3-folding-ps3-triples-folding-at-homes-computing-power-to-over
-500-tflopspflops-in-spitting-range-246664.php

It would seem that each PS3 is contributing the same CPU horsepower as 24.6
pcs on average.

Since this task is similar in resource needs to a pov render -- mostly
needing CPU and some memory, with very little IO; and since pov rendering
is also highly parallelalizable (sp?) it seems to me that a native PS3 port
of pov might be highly desirable around here.

What do others think? Is there some way I can help make such a thing come
into being?

Cheers

Andy

Post a reply to this message

Hi all, Andrew,

Your post is interesting !
Is there somebody out there who tested that on PS3 ?

<ftp://ftp.yellowdoglinux.com/pub/yellowdog/iso/yellowdog-5.0-phoenix-200
61208-PS3.iso>

Best regards,


Author of Eureka 2.12 (2D Graph describer, 3D Modeller)
http://eureka.atari.org/


> I was just looking at this page:
> http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/breaking-ps3-folding-ps3-
triples-folding-at-homes-computing-power-to-over
> -500-tflopspflops-in-spitting-range-246664.php
> 
> It would seem that each PS3 is contributing the same CPU horsepower as 
24.6
> pcs on average.
> 
> Since this task is similar in resource needs to a pov render -- mostly
> needing CPU and some memory, with very little IO; and since pov renderi
ng
> is also highly parallelalizable (sp?) it seems to me that a native PS3 
port
> of pov might be highly desirable around here.
> 
> What do others think? Is there some way I can help make such a thing co
me
> into being?

Post a reply to this message

Andrew Price nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 23-03-2007 14:58:
> Hi folks!
> 
> I was just looking at this page:
>
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/breaking-ps3-folding-ps3-triples-folding-at-homes-computing-power-to-over
> -500-tflopspflops-in-spitting-range-246664.php
> 
> It would seem that each PS3 is contributing the same CPU horsepower as 24.6
> pcs on average.
> 
> Since this task is similar in resource needs to a pov render -- mostly
> needing CPU and some memory, with very little IO; and since pov rendering
> is also highly parallelalizable (sp?) it seems to me that a native PS3 port
> of pov might be highly desirable around here.
> 
> What do others think? Is there some way I can help make such a thing come
> into being?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Andy
> 
> 
Somebody already though of that, look at: RenderFarm@Home
Her's the address: http://server2.povaddict.com.ar/pov/

The URL should give a hint about the rendering engine used ;-)

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.

Post a reply to this message

> Somebody already though of that, look at: RenderFarm@Home
> Her's the address: http://server2.povaddict.com.ar/pov/
>

Sadly this domain seems to be dead. :(

I imagine a simple port of pov (even 3.7) would not work without some extra
work to use the SPUs properly.

Anyone on the dev team have any ideas? I know it has come up a few times
before.

Andy :)

Post a reply to this message

Andrew Price nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 24-03-2007 00:03:
>> Somebody already though of that, look at: RenderFarm@Home
>> Her's the address: http://server2.povaddict.com.ar/pov/
>>
> 
> Sadly this domain seems to be dead. :(
> 
> I imagine a simple port of pov (even 3.7) would not work without some extra
> work to use the SPUs properly.
> 
> Anyone on the dev team have any ideas? I know it has come up a few times
> before.
> 
> Andy :)
> 
> 
Was hosted on a homePC up to March 22 (last Google cached version).

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.

Post a reply to this message

Now I see I think. Sorry Alain, I think you misundertood -- I am not really
looking for a distributed render farm, but rather a version of pov that
runs on the PS3 and uses its superior processor fully.

:)

Post a reply to this message

"Andrew Price" <apr### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Now I see I think. Sorry Alain, I think you misundertood -- I am not really
> looking for a distributed render farm, but rather a version of pov that
> runs on the PS3 and uses its superior processor fully.
>
> :)

I think it's clear that the Cell is a very difficult architecture to write
for if you want to take full advantage of it. I believe the article said
that this folding client was written with help from Sony. You'll probably
be waiting a long time for a Cell-optimised version of POV-Ray.

Post a reply to this message

Hi,

I bought a PlayStation 3 yesterday morning ;)

Tom York wrote :
> Andrew Price wrote :
>> Now I see I think. Sorry Alain, I think you misundertood -- I am not r
eally
>> looking for a distributed render farm, but rather a version of pov tha
t
>> runs on the PS3 and uses its superior processor fully.
>>
>> :)
> 
> I think it's clear that the Cell is a very difficult architecture to wr
ite
> for if you want to take full advantage of it. I believe the article sai
d
> that this folding client was written with help from Sony. You'll probab
ly
> be waiting a long time for a Cell-optimised version of POV-Ray.

If Povray 3.7 was ever ported to PS3, it could simply first at least
take advantage of the hyperthreading technology that is present on
the MPE, even if it doesn't benefit from the sort of 'Altivec' that
is implemented with SPEs. That means take the full advantage of the
main processor running 3.2GHz (not so bad) with multithreading.

That's roughly first a quite easy port to experiment. I can't do
it myself for the moment.

You may share this opinion.

Best regards,


Author of Eureka 2.12 (2D Graph Describer, 3D Modeller)
http://eureka.atari.org/

Post a reply to this message

Francois LE COAT wrote:
> If Povray 3.7 was ever ported to PS3, it could simply first at least
> take advantage of the hyperthreading technology that is present on
> the MPE, even if it doesn't benefit from the sort of 'Altivec' that
> is implemented with SPEs. That means take the full advantage of the
> main processor running 3.2GHz (not so bad) with multithreading.
> 
> That's roughly first a quite easy port to experiment. I can't do
> it myself for the moment.


For reference, although unified compilers do exist, I believe that most 
development is currently done by using two different compilers and two 
different code bases: one for the main processors, and one for the SPEs.

It's probably hard enough writing *new* software for it.  Porting 
existing codebases would be a major PITA.

...Chambers

Post a reply to this message

Andrew Price wrote:
> Hi folks!
> 
> I was just looking at this page:
>
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/breaking-ps3-folding-ps3-triples-folding-at-homes-computing-power-to-over
> -500-tflopspflops-in-spitting-range-246664.php
> 
> It would seem that each PS3 is contributing the same CPU horsepower as 24.6
> pcs on average.
> 
> Since this task is similar in resource needs to a pov render -- mostly
> needing CPU and some memory, with very little IO; and since pov rendering
> is also highly parallelalizable (sp?) it seems to me that a native PS3 port
> of pov might be highly desirable around here.
> 
> What do others think? Is there some way I can help make such a thing come
> into being?
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Andy
> 
> 

24.6 'average' Windows PCs. What's the average PC that is running
Folding@Home? All it would take to throw that average a bit is a few
people with free electricity and a Pentium Pros they don't mind keeping
around. The PS3 has a nice advantage of being pretty uniform, so their
average is affected more by how many people are playing games then which
people are running on slower hardware. I'm also not sure about the PS3,
but I know PCs are able to run BOINC (SETI@Home and others) while
running other software, which would also result in lower scores for
active PCs. If the PS3 only runs Folding@Home while it is not playing
games, that would be another thing to boost it's apparent rating.

As for POV-Ray, it might not even be worth porting to the PS3. Quoting
wiki on the cell arch:

"The PPE's VMX (AltiVec) unit is fully pipelined for double precision
floating point and each SPU can complete two double precision operations
per clock cycle, which translates to 6.4 GFLOPS at 3.2 GHz"

That maximum doesn't mention anything about it's actual speed, just the
theoretical top end. Also from wiki:

"PlayStation 3's Cell CPU achieves 204 GFLOPS single precision float and
15 GFLOPS double precision"

That sounds a lot more reasonable, when you count in how many clock
cycles multiplying really takes.

15 GLOPS is still a good speed, but I don't know that porting POV-Ray to
the PS3 is going to happen before some quad core desktop matches or
passes that speed. If gcc gets to the point that it can take SMP POV-Ray
(beta or 4.0 eventually) and convert that to the Cell's unique
abilities, great. I'm putting my money on the x86 though.

Post a reply to this message