2007/10/24, Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr>:
Then someone told me that the Playstation 3 is a PPC64/Linux
> platform...  I'm still not quite sure whether having OCaml on
> PPC64/Linux is worth the effort, even if we had the corresponding hardware.

PlayStation3's processor (the Cell) has some parenty with powerpc but
it mostly has differences (cell is a ppc6). It has many cores and in
fact a variable number of more-or-less specialized cores.
It's a sort of revolution because its SMP capabilities are really
different from thos of a Core2Duo or of an Athlon64X2. I think there
is at least a theorical interest as it seems to perfectly fit
simultaneous processing (but maybe not so close).

There is of course wikipedia's article :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_microprocessor
It shows Cell should make its way in super-computing.

But more striking are examples of cell's power and scalability (at
least apparent):
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4837
http://www.rapidmind.net/case-studies.php

I don't know of any recent and proper independant benchmarks but when
I first read about it, Cell looked like a thing we should keep an eye
on.


 ---

Adrien Nader