Looking for advice about selecting hardware for graphics and data visualization

[Andrew Kaplan]

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.


On 7/24/09 9:43 AM, "Geoffrey Mendelson" <geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 6:57 AM, Omer Zak<w1 at zak.co.il> wrote:
> I am looking for advice about selecting motherboard and graphic card/s
> for a new PC which I plan to acquire; and about suppliers available to
> Israelis (whereas in Israel or abroad).

The PS/3 is very highly rated (and unfortunately highly taxed here)
for doing such things. I don't know how well IBM supports FOSS tools
for graphics, they have a group in Canada which provides programing
support, you can contact them.

YellowDog's PS/3 Linux  is a bloated, everything they can, Red Hat
based distro, but it should be easy enough to reduce it to what you
need or want. In the end it won't be much different than any other
Linux, but you start from a DVD and work down instead of a CD and work
up. I know you are a debian fan, this may be a bit of culture shock.

The only negative I can give you is after many discussions on the
subject with a former IBM engineer specializing in multiprocessor
throughput improvement, is that the PS3 is designed to run at about
85% CPU utilization. Cranking it up to 95 or 100% for long periods
will burn it out.  You probably can avoid this by adding an extra fan
or air conditioning,  but you may find that one out of the box on
lasts 3 to 6 months if you really push it.

Geoff.


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Jerusalem, Israel

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