Cell Devel Nodes
| Cell Development Cluster | |
|---|---|
| Installed | June 2010 |
| Operating System | Linux |
| Interconnect | Infiniband |
| Ram/Node | 32 Gb |
| Cores/Node | 2 PPU + 16 SPU |
| Login/Devel Node | cell-srv01 (from login.scinet) |
| Vendor Compilers | ppu-gcc, spu-gcc |
The Cell Development Cluster is a technology evaluation cluster with a combination of 14 IBM PowerXCell 8i "Cell" nodes and 8 Intel x86_64 "Nehalem" nodes. The QS22's each have two 3.2GHz "IBM PowerXCell 8i CPU's, where each CPU has 1 Power Processing Unit (PPU) and 8 Synergistic Processing Units (SPU), and 32GB of RAM per node.
Login
First login via ssh with your scinet account at login.scinet.utoronto.ca, and from there you can proceed to cell-srv01 which is currently the gateway machine.
Compile/Devel/Compute Nodes
Cell
You can log into any of 12 nodes blade[03-14] directly to compile/test/run Cell specific or OpenCL codes.
Local Disk
This test cluster currently cannot see the global /home and /scratch space so you will have to copy (scp,etc..) your code to a separate local/home dedicated for this cluster. Also initially you will probably want to copy/modify your scinet .bashrc, .bashrc_profile, and .ssh directory onto this system.
Programming Frameworks
Currently there are two programming frameworks to use. The Cell SDK is the most full featured and "supported" but is architecture specific, whereas the OpenCL should allow code portability to other accelerators (like GP-GPU's) however is from IBM alphaworks so should be considered beta.
OpenCL
Examples are in
/usr/share/doc/OpenCL-0.1-ibm
Cell SDK
Demos, examples, and build details available in
/opt/cell/sdk/
Compilers
NOTE: gcc has been replaced, use ppu-gcc for most cases where gcc whould be used
- ppu-gcc -- GNU GCC PPC compiler
- spu-gcc -- GNU GCC SPU compiler
- xlcl -- IBM XL OpenCL compiler
MPI
Still a work in progress.
Documentation
- Cell SDK
- Programming:CBE Programmers Guide,CBE Handbook,CBE Programming Tutorial,CBE PXCell Handbook,Performance Tools Reference,IDE Users Guide
- Libraries:3D FFT,libFFT,ALF,BLAS,SIMD Math API,DaCS,LAPACK,Monte Carlo,SDK Library Examples,SPE Runtime Management, SPE Runtime Migration,SPE Runtime Library Ext.
- Architecure: CBEA,CBEA Public Registers,PPC Book 1,PPC Book 2,PPC Book 3,SPU ISA
- Standards:CBE Linux ABI,Language Extentsions,SIMD Library Specification,SPU ABI Specification,SPU Assembly Language Specification
- Installation: Installation Guide
- Cell OpenCL
Further Info
IBM Cell Broadband engine tutorials http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ieduasst/stgv1r0/index.jsp
User Codes
Please discuss put any relevant information/problems/best practices you have encountered when using/developing for CELL and/or OpenCL