[CPMD-list] CPMD on PS3

[Axel Kohlmeyer]

On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Yirdaw, Robel Birru wrote:

RBY> Hello all,
RBY> 
RBY> Does anyone know if it is possible to compile and run CPMD on the new
RBY> playstation (PS3)?  If not, will it be possible to do so in the upcoming

robel,

you should be able to compile current CPMD versions to run on the
PPC part of the Cell processor for as long as you run linux on it.
you probably don't even need the IBM toolchain for that.
 
however, there is currently no support for the special SIMD units 
(SPEs) of the cell processor in CPMD. according to wikipedia, 
the performance of which is supposed to drop by an order of magnitude
when using double precision floating point (compared to single 
precision, which is sufficient for games, but not codes like CPMD). 

there is a full speed double precision verison of the cell processor 
announced for the "roadrunner" cluster at los alamos, but still using 
CPMD (or any other code) on that machine efficiently would require a 
major rewrite of several parts of the code, as the cell processor is 
very demanding in that respect. in contrast, it will be much easier to 
add support for GPGPUs (once they move to double precision, as it is 
rumored for the next generation of nvidia hardware) using an interface
like CUDA.

in any case, those developments would require that somebody actually
devotes some time to work on that, and i don't know of anybody at
the momemnt. if there is, please speak up... ;-)

cheers,
   axel.

RBY> versions of CPMD?
RBY> 
RBY> Thanks,
RBY> 
RBY> -Robel
RBY> 
RBY> _______________________________________________
RBY> CPMD-list mailing list
RBY> CPMD-list at cpmd.org
RBY> http://cpmd.org/mailman/listinfo/cpmd-list
RBY> 

-- 
=======================================================================
Axel Kohlmeyer   akohlmey at cmm.chem.upenn.edu   http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
   Center for Molecular Modeling   --   University of Pennsylvania
Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323
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