Nerve-Damage
04-21-2007, 06:15 PM
MIT Students Experience PS3's Cell (http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/news/?id=15887)
Today, IBM and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that the first course in the U.S. structured around the capabilities of the Cell Broadband Engine recently completed. IBM, Sony Corporation with SCE, and Toshiba collaborated on helping to fund the course with Sony providing the PS3 hardware to be used by students. The four-week Independent Activities Period saw students learn about the Cell and had them design and implement projects to run directly on PS3 system.
"The fact that students -- with no background in parallel programming or the Cell/B.E. -- were able to get their projects done from scratch in just about one month largely goes to show the capability and determination of our students, coupled with the availability of a robust toolchain for Cell/B.E. development," said Saman Amarasinghe, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT.
"Cell/B.E. is going to be an underlying architecture that has the potential to be included in a wide range of industry applications and solutions in the future," said Dr. Rodric Rabbah, IBM Research. "This course was able to break down the details of a highly complex microprocessor and challenge students to see where the performance, power and versatility could be applied outside of gaming. Based on the feedback we received from the students, it was a tremendous success."
Cool...very, very, very cool.
Today, IBM and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that the first course in the U.S. structured around the capabilities of the Cell Broadband Engine recently completed. IBM, Sony Corporation with SCE, and Toshiba collaborated on helping to fund the course with Sony providing the PS3 hardware to be used by students. The four-week Independent Activities Period saw students learn about the Cell and had them design and implement projects to run directly on PS3 system.
"The fact that students -- with no background in parallel programming or the Cell/B.E. -- were able to get their projects done from scratch in just about one month largely goes to show the capability and determination of our students, coupled with the availability of a robust toolchain for Cell/B.E. development," said Saman Amarasinghe, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT.
"Cell/B.E. is going to be an underlying architecture that has the potential to be included in a wide range of industry applications and solutions in the future," said Dr. Rodric Rabbah, IBM Research. "This course was able to break down the details of a highly complex microprocessor and challenge students to see where the performance, power and versatility could be applied outside of gaming. Based on the feedback we received from the students, it was a tremendous success."
Cool...very, very, very cool.