We evaluate IBM’s Enhanced Cell Broadband Engine (BE) as a possible building block of a new generation of lattice QCD machines. The Enhanced Cell BE will provide full support of doubleprecision floating-point arithmetics, including IEEE-compliant rounding. We have developed a performance model and applied it to relevant lattice QCD kernels. The performance estimates are supported by micro- and application-benchmarks that have been obtained on currently available Cell BE-based computers, such as IBM QS20 blades and PlayStation 3. The results are encouraging and show that this processor is an interesting option for lattice QCD applications. For a massively parallel machine on the basis of the Cell BE, an application-optimized network needs to be developed.
QCD on the Cell Broadband Engine
BELLETTI, Francesco;SCHIFANO, Sebastiano Fabio;TRIPICCIONE, Raffaele;
2007
Abstract
We evaluate IBM’s Enhanced Cell Broadband Engine (BE) as a possible building block of a new generation of lattice QCD machines. The Enhanced Cell BE will provide full support of doubleprecision floating-point arithmetics, including IEEE-compliant rounding. We have developed a performance model and applied it to relevant lattice QCD kernels. The performance estimates are supported by micro- and application-benchmarks that have been obtained on currently available Cell BE-based computers, such as IBM QS20 blades and PlayStation 3. The results are encouraging and show that this processor is an interesting option for lattice QCD applications. For a massively parallel machine on the basis of the Cell BE, an application-optimized network needs to be developed.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
