<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Re: Looking for advice about selecting hardware for graphics and data visualization</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>The PS3’s cell is also know for it’s relative difficulty in programming multi-threaded applications for. 6-7 of the SPEs are available to Linux, but Sony implements a hypervisor crippling access to the GPU (which is an Nvidia Geforce 7 type device). The modern GPUs by ATI and Nvidia easily beat Sony’s offering.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
On 7/24/09 9:43 AM, "Geoffrey Mendelson" <<a href="geoffreymendelson@gmail.com">geoffreymendelson@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<BR>
<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 6:57 AM, Omer Zak<<a href="w1@zak.co.il">w1@zak.co.il</a>> wrote:<BR>
> I am looking for advice about selecting motherboard and graphic card/s<BR>
> for a new PC which I plan to acquire; and about suppliers available to<BR>
> Israelis (whereas in Israel or abroad).<BR>
<BR>
The PS/3 is very highly rated (and unfortunately highly taxed here)<BR>
for doing such things. I don't know how well IBM supports FOSS tools<BR>
for graphics, they have a group in Canada which provides programing<BR>
support, you can contact them.<BR>
<BR>
YellowDog's PS/3 Linux is a bloated, everything they can, Red Hat<BR>
based distro, but it should be easy enough to reduce it to what you<BR>
need or want. In the end it won't be much different than any other<BR>
Linux, but you start from a DVD and work down instead of a CD and work<BR>
up. I know you are a debian fan, this may be a bit of culture shock.<BR>
<BR>
The only negative I can give you is after many discussions on the<BR>
subject with a former IBM engineer specializing in multiprocessor<BR>
throughput improvement, is that the PS3 is designed to run at about<BR>
85% CPU utilization. Cranking it up to 95 or 100% for long periods<BR>
will burn it out. You probably can avoid this by adding an extra fan<BR>
or air conditioning, but you may find that one out of the box on<BR>
lasts 3 to 6 months if you really push it.<BR>
<BR>
Geoff.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
--<BR>
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM<BR>
Jerusalem, Israel<BR>
<BR>
_______________________________________________<BR>
Linux-il mailing list<BR>
<a href="Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il">Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il</a><BR>
<a href="http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il">http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il</a><BR>
<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
</BODY>
</HTML>