[Users] Cell based workstation from Sony

[Gaurav Khanna]

Hi all

I was recently contacted by Sony concerning an evaluation of the market
(in the scientific HPC community) for a Cell processor based workstation
which includes Sony's RSX GPU. These are the same technologies used in the
PS3, but they are appropriately modified for general purpose computing.

Apparently, detailed specs don't quite exist yet (they are still in flux)
but the price point is expected to be in the 7K range.

Can you folks send me your thoughts about the likelihood of success of
such a beast in the scientific community? Thanks very much.

I'm including some links below on the Cell processor and RSX, in case
you're not very familiar with these ..

Best Regards
Gaurav

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_processor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX_%27Reality_Synthesizer%27



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GAURAV KHANNA
UMass Dartmouth, Physics
(508) 910 6605
http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/

"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steven Wright