[Fwd: Re: [Beowulf] Cell in HPC]

[Greg Lindahl]

On Tue, May 30, 2006 at 09:12:28AM -0500, Richard Walsh wrote:

>    2.  Three tiered memory system with simple local memory (store,
>    like old Cray-2) that is user/software managed is preferable to
>    cache in the above context.  Double buffering and prefetching to
>    local store reduce memory delays dramatically.

I wouldn't make this comparison. The Cray 2 local store was much
easier to use than Cell's software-managed memory. And almost no one
actually used the Cray 2 local store. Which ought to be a lesson
learned.

Another example of a modern machine with software-managed local store
is QCDOC. Again, this is the easy-to-use kind, very unlike Cell.

-- greg