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PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

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Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#11

Post by rideontime »

flipacholas wrote: post #7
eek2121 wrote: post #6

So, I'd have to dig through some older notes I have, however, some of this information seems inaccurate based upon my own interpretation of the specs (and writing code...specifically, but not limited to, the PowerPC part). A suggestion from me is to provide sources, and also maybe an epub of this.

Please see this: https://github.com/flipacholas/Architecture-of-consoles > A suggestion from me is to provide sources, and also maybe an epub of this What do you mean?

It seems they missed this. https://payhip.com/copetti

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#12

Post by wmf »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #9

> The EIB is made of twelve nodes called Ramps, each one connecting one component of Cell... Having said that, instead of recurring to single bus topologies (like the Emotion Engine and its precursor did), ramps are inter-connected following the token ring topology, where data packets must cross through all neighbours until it reaches the destination (there’s no direct path). I knew IBM was involved in the design of…

The EIB has nothing to do with 1980s Token Ring and this is arguably a mistake in the article. It's just a ring topology.

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#13

Post by duskwuff »

amelius wrote: post #2

Can it run deep learning workloads?

It's a nearly 20 year old gaming console. Even if you could port a deep learning workload to run efficiently on the Cell architecture, it would be thoroughly outclassed by a modern cell phone (to say nothing of a desktop computer).

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#14

Post by Tuna-Fish »

cogman10 wrote: post #5
nxobject wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PS3 was used a few time in clusters – some NN work was done on it back in the day. My understanding (somewhat echoed in TFA) is that when programming Cell, you really needed to think about communication patterns to avoid quickly running into memory bandwidth limitations, especially given memory hierarchy and bus quirks. https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/629/

For a while, it was a major player in protein folding. I remember the PS3 was particularly apt at doing that sort of work.

For it's day, it packed a lot of compute into cheap package, so long as you could do something useful with a data set that fit into 256kB, the size of the local memory buffer on each SPE. If you overflowed that, the anemic system bandwidth would make it suck. Protein folding was an example of a problem that back then used tons of compute but could be fit into small space.

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#15

Post by zorgmonkey »

amelius wrote: post #2

Can it run deep learning workloads?

With enough effort you could definitely do it. Just remember it is a device that came out in 2006 and it has 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of VRAM, at best you're running a quite small model after a lot work trying to port some inference code to CELL processors. Honestly it does sound a cool excuse to write code for the CELL processors, but don't expect amazing performance or anything.

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#16

Post by MBCook »

wmf wrote: post #12
RiverCrochet wrote: post #9

> The EIB is made of twelve nodes called Ramps, each one connecting one component of Cell... Having said that, instead of recurring to single bus topologies (like the Emotion Engine and its precursor did), ramps are inter-connected following the token ring topology, where data packets must cross through all neighbours until it reaches the destination (there’s no direct path). I knew IBM was involved in the design of…

The EIB has nothing to do with 1980s Token Ring and this is arguably a mistake in the article. It's just a ring topology.

I suspect it’s an attempt at a metaphor that isn’t clearly marked as such.

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#17

Post by specialp »

cogman10 wrote: post #5
nxobject wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PS3 was used a few time in clusters – some NN work was done on it back in the day. My understanding (somewhat echoed in TFA) is that when programming Cell, you really needed to think about communication patterns to avoid quickly running into memory bandwidth limitations, especially given memory hierarchy and bus quirks. https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/629/

For a while, it was a major player in protein folding. I remember the PS3 was particularly apt at doing that sort of work.

It was the biggest contributor to folding @ home at one point. It came bundled with the PS3 and played relaxing music and showed a heat map of the world ps3 compute nodes as it went on. There was also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#18

Post by rtpg »

I remember hearing somebody talk about programming hot loops in either the the PS3 or PS2 in Excel, to get a good handle on the concurrency question by having assembler in multiple columns next to each other

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#19

Post by 867-5309 »

cogman10 wrote: post #5
nxobject wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PS3 was used a few time in clusters – some NN work was done on it back in the day. My understanding (somewhat echoed in TFA) is that when programming Cell, you really needed to think about communication patterns to avoid quickly running into memory bandwidth limitations, especially given memory hierarchy and bus quirks. https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/629/

For a while, it was a major player in protein folding. I remember the PS3 was particularly apt at doing that sort of work.

they've also been used for crypto mining/cracking

Re: PlayStation 3 Architecture (2021)

#20

Post by nickpsecurity »

rtpg wrote: post #18

I remember hearing somebody talk about programming hot loops in either the the PS3 or PS2 in Excel, to get a good handle on the concurrency question by having assembler in multiple columns next to each other

Sounds like a Gantt chart with code might fit.
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