fae_alba Posted January 11, 2015 Posted January 11, 2015 So one has to wonder; could this be a quick super render farm for A:M users? http://www.sciencealert.com/this-physicist-has-built-a-supercomputer-from-old-playstations Quote
*A:M User* Shelton Posted January 11, 2015 *A:M User* Posted January 11, 2015 I saw this and wondered the same. The only thing was memory. Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted January 11, 2015 Hash Fellow Posted January 11, 2015 I'm going to guess that getting it to run Windows or MacOS so the A:M renderer can be used will be a challenge. According to the summary of the paper linked to, they are doing GPU processing which hasn't been fruitful for A:M so far. In this paper, we accelerate a gravitational physics numerical modelling application using hardware accelerators – Cell processor and Tesla CUDA GPU. I'd be curious to see what his output is for his black hole study. Charts, graphs... a list of numbers? Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted January 11, 2015 Hash Fellow Posted January 11, 2015 a little more... A PS3 doesn't run on an intel CPU so there is that problem and the PS3 has only 0.25 Gig of RAM From Wikipedia... The PS3 uses the Cell microprocessor, which is made up of one 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based "Power Processing Element" (PPE) and six accessible Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). A seventh runs in a special mode and is dedicated to aspects of the OS and security, and an eighth is a spare to improve production yields. PlayStation 3's Cell CPU achieves a theoretical maximum of 23.04 GFLOPS[3] in single precision floating point operations and up to 10 GFLOPS double precision using iterative refinement for the solution of linear equations.[4] The PS3 has 256 MB of Rambus XDR DRAM, clocked at CPU die speed. Quote
NancyGormezano Posted January 11, 2015 Posted January 11, 2015 I found it interesting that the article in the first post also said - they will be attempting building a supercomputer with graphics cards - making the potential for a more feasible solution for using with A:M, with of course, the major stumble being the assumption that anyone would follow that path of developing that specifically for an A:M solution. The next project Khanna wants to work on is creating a supercomputer out of PC graphics cards, which are equally low-cost but as powerful as around 20 PS3 consoles. “The next supercomputer we’re going to build will probably be made entirely of these cards,” Khanna told Parker. “It won’t work for everything, but it will certainly cover a large set of scientific and engineering applications, especially if we keep improving on it.” Quote
*A:M User* Roger Posted January 11, 2015 *A:M User* Posted January 11, 2015 A PS4 might work a bit better, since it uses an AMD cpu with built in Radeon gpu. I don't see the PS3 working due to the low memory and also the Linux factor. If AM ran on Linux the only drawback then with the PS3 is the low memory. I don't know if you could run Windows on a PS4, though, so that probably wouldn't work either unless a Linux version of AM was in the pipes. I don't think it is impossible given that OSX is based on BSD unix but I don't think the resources are there to support AM on Linux. Quote
Fuchur Posted January 11, 2015 Posted January 11, 2015 a little more... A PS3 doesn't run on an intel CPU so there is that problem and the PS3 has only 0.25 Gig of RAM x86(_64) architecture is what you mean... not Intel CPU. Most AMD CPUs are x86 architecture too (there are some serversystems built by AMD which are using ARM structures, but that is still under developement and not widely spread). That is especially interesting and important, since PS4 is using an AMD-APU (which is an AMD-CPU and GPU combined) and is based on the x86(_64) architecture too. Like that something compareable could be built with PS4s (or in fact XBox Ones, since they share the same AMD APU)... PS4s and XBox Ones are built like a typical PC and could theoretically run A:M on them... See you *Fuchur* Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted January 11, 2015 Hash Fellow Posted January 11, 2015 All i can say is that if running A:M code on GPUs instead of regular CPUs was an easy conversion it would be done already. Steffen has given it a very serious investigation and it hasn't been feasible. Quote
pixelplucker Posted January 12, 2015 Posted January 12, 2015 If the PS3 is such a powerhouse then why did Sony start using AMD's? Might as well trying to build a system with the NVIDIA VCA's. Quote
Fuchur Posted January 12, 2015 Posted January 12, 2015 PS3 is not... it is just inexpensive and such a news sounds great for the media... "really? A gaming console is a supercomputer? wow..." I am not sure if there are things that can be calculated faster or if it is easier to combine PS3s with eachother or if developing such a supercomputer just takes some time and PS4 is too new for being incorperated here, but in general especially for games, PS4 has a much higher performance with much better graphics, better CPU performance, is easier to produce games for (since you do not have to optimize the games for 3 different platforms, as it was before, and so on. See you *Fuchur* Quote
pixelplucker Posted January 13, 2015 Posted January 13, 2015 If I remember correctly when the Xbox 360 came out people where making render farms using one of the many Linux OS on them. I thing the Xbox 360 has a tri-core PowerPC chip in it. Quote
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