Madagascar on a Playstation 3

William Burnett

Friday Seminar

December 4, 2009

Motivation

• Curiosity

• Playstation 3 (PS3) is an expensive game console but a cheap home computer

• Cell processor

Overview

• PS3 background and hardware

• Linux on a PS3

• Madagascar on a PS3

Precedence of PS3 in Geophysics• Bednar and Bednar, 2007, Playing around

with a seismic Playstation cluster, SEG Expanded Abstracts– Panorama Technologies Software

• Raytracing• FD Modeling• 2-way RTM

• Modified FD modeling code ran ~10 times faster than similar array of AMD processors.

PS3: 4 Generations

Generation Disk Space Linux Compatible?

1 20 GB, 60 GB Yes

2 60 GB, 80 GB Yes

3 40 GB, 80 GB, 160 GB

Yes

4 “PS3 Slim” 120 GB,

250 GB

No

PS3: 4 Generations

Generation Disk Space Linux Compatible?

1 20 GB, 60 GB Yes

2 60 GB, 80 GB Yes

3 40 GB, 80 GB, 160 GB

Yes

4 “PS3 Slim” 120 GB,

250 GB

No

PS3 Hardware

• Processor:– “Cell Processor”

• Sony/Toshiba/IBM

• Memory:– 256 MB RAM

• Graphics:– NVIDIA RSX “Reality

Synthesizer”

PS3 Hardware

• Processor:– “Cell Processor”

• Sony/Toshiba/IBM

• Memory:– 256 MB RAM

• Graphics:– NVIDIA RSX “Reality

Synthesizer”

Cell Processor

http://www.csh.rit.edu/~oguns/ps3/imgs/Cell_Arch.gif

1 Dual Thread Power Processing Element

(Normal Processor)

8 “Synergistic Processing Elements” (SPEs)

(SIMD Vector Processors)

Each 3.2 GHz

Cell Processor

http://www.csh.rit.edu/~oguns/ps3/imgs/Cell_Arch.gif

1 Dual Thread Power Processing Element

(Normal Processor)

8 “Synergistic Processing Elements” (SPEs)

(SIMD Vector Processors)

Each 3.2 GHz

PS3 Game Operating System

Linux on a PS3

Linux on a PS3

• Most Linux distributions work

• I chose Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 (YDL)– Designed with PS3 in mind– No one has put Madagascar on Yellow Dog

Linux yet (as far as I know)

Getting Yellow Dog Linux

• http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/

• Download DVD ISO Image:– yellowdog-6.1-ppc-DVD_20090201_NEW_PS3.iso

• Burn ISO image to a DVD

• Download/print the installation guide:– http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/installation/ydl6.1_ps3_guide.pdf

YDL Installation: Materials

• Yellow Dog ISO image DVD

• YDL installation guide or another computer with internet access

• USB keyboard and mouse

• HDTV connected by 5-component or HDMI or a monitor connected by HDMI

YDL Installation: Procedure

• 1.) Insert YDL DVD into Playstation while the power is on.

• 2.) Reboot into “Other OS”

YDL Installation: Procedure

YDL Installation: Procedure

YDL Installation: Procedure

YDL Installation: Procedure

• 3.) Choose resolution– 480i

– 720p– 1080i

– 1080p

Command Line Installation

(Still pretty easy.)

Graphical Installation

(Easy!!!)

YDL Installation: Procedure

• 4.) Follow installation guide through configuration*

• 5.) Install (Go do something else)

• 6.) Follow guide through first-boot

*At “Package Selection”, choose all three types of computer use: home, media, and programming

YDL Installation: Done!

• Finish by configuring wireless and desktop fontsize/themes.

YDL Installation: Done!

• Finish by configuring wireless and desktop fontsize/themes.

Get Madagascar

• Get Subversion (SVN)*

• From command line:– svn co https://rsf.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/rsf/trunk RSFSRC

• Unpack (tar –xvf …)

*May be included if you select programming packages during YDL installation

Install Madagascar

• Follow ahay.org walkthrough:– http://ahay.org/wiki/Installation

• One problem encountered:– Software included with YDL 6.1 did not have

libXaw-devel development tool.• Needed for sfpen, xtpen, etc… (Data displays)• Found power pc version online, installation

completed

Madagascar on a PS3!

Conclusions

• Madagascar in Yellow Dog Linux?– Yes

• Madagascar on a PS3?– Yes

• Extra computational power?– Not really

• SPE use requires special programming• Memory is very limited

Things to look at…

• SPE development kit from IBM with C compiler: spu-gcc

• Modified code for Cell processor– Not platform independent, but may be

interesting

• News of future Cell processor development (doesn’t look promising…)

Thanks!