Seeking advice on PS3 applicability

[dhibbit]

I was curious to see how useful the PS3 could be on some computational chemistry I work with. The program currently runs on Linux clusters containing two Intel EMT cpus and 3gb of RAM per node with a GigE interconnect, another cluster with AMD Opteron processors is also used. Typical calculations run across 8-16 processors at a time.

I know I haven't provided much information, truth be told, I'm not sure what exactly is relevant. The program documentation states that they support Pentium II, III, IV and Athlon based PC's under Linux with only the Portland group compiler and the Intel Fortran compiler are supported but they recognize that other platforms (such as IBM RS6000 and IBM-SP2) have been used with success.

Thanks!

[Arwin]

Well I can give a generic answer - if the application doesn't support Cell natively, then it'll be hard pressed to make good use of the PS3. Also the PS3 is very constrained in the memory department. Unless the calculations make good use of streaming and Cell, they're not going to work that well on PS3s I think.

But once you do write something that supports Cell, then the PS3 is a cheap option and you can actually chain a bunch of them together to get some crazy performance. There are several examples out there of researchers writing their own software to take advantage of just this aspect of the PS3.

That may well not be an option for you though. ;)