SOURCE: IBM
April 20, 2007 09:55 ET
IBM and MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Complete First Ever Course on the Cell Broadband Engine
ARMONK, NY and CAMBRIDGE, MA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- April 20, 2007 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announce the recent completion
of the first course in the United States structured around the capabilities
of the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell/B.E), the microprocessor that powers
Sony Computer Entertainment's (SCE) PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer
entertainment system. IBM, Sony Corporation and SCE (Sony group), and
Toshiba collaborated on helping to fund the course and Sony group provided
the PS3 hardware to be used by students.
During the four-week Independent Activities Period course in January,
students not only learned about the new microprocessor, but designed and
implemented projects to run directly on PS3 system using open standards
software. The student team with the best project -- a 3D version of the
classic pong game -- later presented their work and discussed their
experience at the Game Developer Conference in March 7 2007.
The course, which focused around introducing parallel programming to
students, was taught by Saman Amarasinghe, a professor in MIT's Department
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Dr. Rodric Rabbah of
IBM.
"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.
Throughout the course, students became familiar with Cell/B.E. and how its
design choices compare to other emerging architectures. Students also
formed small project teams and participated in a course-long project to
develop applications to run on Cell/B.E. using the IBM Cell SDK available
from IBM developerWorks.
"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."
A website hosted by the Computer Architecture Group at MIT posts
information on the course, including lectures and recitation plans. It has
been visited more than a hundred thousand times since the completion of the
course. More information on the course can be found at:
http://cag.csail.mit.edu/ps3/.
IBM is also currently hosting a first-of-its-kind programming contest --
the Cell University Challenge -- for college and university students in 25
different countries, offering cash prizes and awards for the most
innovative applications of the breakthrough Cell/B.E. All information on
eligibility, rules and requirements, and entry applications can be found
at:
http://www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/university/students/contests/cell/index.html
The revolutionary Cell/B.E. -- jointly developed by IBM, Sony group and
Toshiba -- is a breakthrough design featuring a central processing core
based on IBM's industry-leading Power Architecture™ technology and eight
synergistic processing elements (SPE). Cell/B.E. "supercharges"
compute-intensive applications, offering fast performance for computer
entertainment and handhelds, virtual reality, wireless downloads, real-time
video chat, interactive TV shows and other "image-hungry" computing
environments. The groundbreaking Cell/B.E. processor appears in products
such as SCE's PS3 and Toshiba's Cell/B.E. Reference Set, a development tool
for Cell/B.E. applications, as well as the IBM BladeCenter QS20. It is
also embedded in custom Cell/B.E. based offerings from IBM Global
Engineering Solutions.
About IBM
For more information about IBM, please visit http://www.ibm.com.
About MIT
The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science,
technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation
and the world in the 21st century. More information can be found at
http://web.mit.edu/index.html.
IBM, BladeCenter, Power Architecture and QS20 are trademarks of IBM
Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
"PLAYSTATION" is a registered trademark and "PS3" is a trademark of Sony
Computer Entertainment Inc.
"Cell Broadband Engine" is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.
See http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.