Cell gets some more push elsewhere

[patsu]

http://www.nyp.edu.sg/aboutNYP/latest_news/2007/nyp_ibm_cell_be_tech_inno_ctr/nyp_ibm_cell_be_tech_inno_ctr.htm


Through this collaboration, NYP will educate nearly 360 students over the next three years by integrating Cell/B.E. technology into the curriculum of two diploma courses from the School of Interactive and Digital Media...

For a start, NYP will set up a render farm and related solutions using Cell/B.E. and related technology from IBM. NYP will collaborate to port Pixie, an open source rendering software, running on IBM BladeCenter QS20 'Cell Blade’ targeted for completion in the fourth quarter of 2007 and develop a short film rendered on Cell/B.E. for demonstration at SIGGRAPH 2007, the 34th International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, in August in San Diego, California.

[mckmas8808]

That sounds pretty cool.

[macabre]

Cell programming contest for students:

http://www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/university/students/contests/cell/index.html

[patsu]

An old friend forwarded me this news link about Cell.
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2007/02/04/ibm_taps_local_researchers_to_turn_playstation_3_c hip_to_science


Last month, IBM selected Kale, Snir and the UI for a Shared University Research program involving nine universities worldwide working on expanding the uses for Cell. That's not a big surprise. The UI has a long history of research in parallel processing and collaboration with IBM. And Snir, a former senior manager at IBM's Watson Research Center, was one of the first people the company called to mull over ideas for employing the new processor.

The UI's cachet has its limits, however. The researchers have access to the Cell technology and special tools for working with it. But they haven't received a PlayStation 3 yet, either.


Looks like IBM is hard at work propagating Cell-related R&D.

Good to know Prof. Kale is still in UIUC. :)

EDIT:
I googled for "Shared University Research" and found the 10 universities:
http://www.ibm.com/news/be/en/2006/12/12.html


Brussels, December 12, 2006 - IBM today announced that ten Universities spanning multiple geographies have been chosen as winners of the latest IBM Shared University Research (SUR) awards. For the first time, each of the Universities will be using the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) technology to enable students and faculty to drive innovation, collaborate and foster skill development in the creation of digital media, software platform performance and medical imaging solutions.

...

The ten winning universities include:

North America

Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia): The College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology will undertake a research project to test high performance computing, gaming and digital content applications on Cell BE technology, as well as port and optimize key Cell libraries for data, video and image processing.
University of California San Diego (San Diego, California): UCSD's Experimental Game Lab will use Cell BE technology to accelerate computation in their applications, making more aspects of game environments a part of a user’s real-time interactive experience.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: The University will look into developing programming models for the Cell Broadband Engine along with applying Cell technology in the continuing development of high performance computing applications including molecular dynamics and cosmology simulations.
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota): The University of Minnesota will investigate Cell BE implementation on numerical algorithms for fluid dynamics.
University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia): The University’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities will be using Cell BE technology to develop a real-time 3D rendering model of the City of Rome in AD400, for both classroom and research in the Institute’s new 3D theater.
University of Washington (Seattle, Washington): The University’s Department of Bioengineering will explore the use of Cell BE technology in various medical imaging modalities. Specifically, they will design a fully programmable ultrasound machine architecture that can be scaled from sophisticated high-end systems to low-cost units for use in doctors’ offices and in the home.


Europe, Middle East and Asia

Barcelona Supercomputing Center at the Technical University of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain): The Center will investigate innovative programming models for scientific and technical computing for life sciences, earth sciences and engineering.
Tsinghua University (Beijing, China): Tsinghua University in China will implement Cell BE to test real-time multi-video synthesizing and rendering, taking images from the real world and modeling them for the virtual world.
United Arab Emirates University (Al-Ain, UAE): The College of Information Technology at the United Arab Emirates University will develop a set of new applications for the Cell BE technology in the areas of seismic imaging and parallel oil reservoir simulations which are of particular importance in the oil industry.
University of Dublin Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland): The University will be implementing Cell BE technology with the goal to create realistic animation of human motion, which is critical to the development of computer and video games and movies.