[geeks] Second Life is not a game?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Aug 1, 2007, at 1:28 AM, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 05:20:26PM -0400, Joshua D. Boyd wrote:
>> Anyone who can't afford a $17,000 Mercury Cell Accelerator cards,  
>> or the
>> unknown price IBM Cell blades?
>
> I guess so, but I have a stupid question. Since Linux is so similar
> on any platform it runs, why? Since you can get a quad processor
> (actually 4 "core") 64 bit X86 computer for so little, why buy
> a PS/3? What does it offer?

Because it can run some things faster.  Picture Altivec that never  
has to wait for memory latency because it is working off of 256k of  
SRAM running at the same speed as the processor.  And in addition,  
this altivec implementation has 128 128-bit registers, instead of  
only 16.  Now, picture 6-8 (PS3 has 6, the stuff from IBM and Mercury  
8) of this Altivec processors in one die, and that combined with  
those Altivec processors, you also have a regular PPC code to feed  
data into the various SRAM locations from main ram and/or other IO  
devices.

Stuff running on the Cell processors can potentially run more than 64  
times faster than an equivalent Core 2 Duo.  Obviously, there are  
tasks where the Cell isn't so good, like general web or file  
serving.  But the Cell is relevant for a lot of computational jobs.

It might be more reasonable to compare the Cell against the Nvidia  
8x00 line, however while the 8x00 line requires a special C compiler  
from Nvidia, and the 8x00 requires a front end processor of some  
sort, the Cell can be self hosting and directly runs linux and GCC.

BTW, Nvidia has taken their 8x00 GPUs and bundled them into rack  
mount compute nodes.  I believe they even offer a BLAS implementation.

>
>>> They also supported some PPC development boards and IBM PPC  
>>> computers,
>>> but they are pretty rare.
>>
>> But possibly lucrative.
>
> I don't know again. I don't see them getting a lot of income from
> a company using them. A company would probably buy one boxed set,
> and possibly join their "network" for online support and early access
> to their releases, but that's what a $100 a year?

I would imagine that people buying YellowDog for Cell based systems  
other than the PS3 would be a) charged more in general, b) buying  
support contracts, and c) likely paying for every system.  Like  
RedHat.  Sure, you can buy one copy and install it every where, but  
how many large companies do that for their critical systems?

The Mercury Cell accellerator board starts at $17,000 the last I  
heard.  The Mercury or IBM Cell blade clusters cost far more.  People  
buying those aren't likely to skimp on software and support.

>> What tools did they make?
>
> YUM for example.

Oh.