SciTech SDK for PlayStation3

Stephen Withers
Monday, 06 August 2007 06:22

Business IT - Technology

Mercury Computer Systems' MultiCore Plus software development kit has been released for the PlayStation 3, opening the power of its Cell Broadband Engine to a variety of scientific and technical applications.

Developers in the areas of financial services, oil and gas, electronic data automation, video compression and biotech are among the markets being targeted by the company.

The SDK costs $US399 per seat and is being sold through Terra Soft Solutions. Once the application has been proved on the low-cost PS3 hardware, it could be moved to more powerful Cell-based blade servers.

"Customers who choose to start out with the PS3 can later migrate seamlessly to more sophisticated hardware solutions from both Mercury and IBM by leveraging our software alongside Yellow Dog Linux from Terra Soft," said Joel Radford, vice president of corporate marketing and strategic alliances at Mercury.

"We've seen a tremendous amount of interest in leveraging the PS3 as a Cell development system and as a compute node for lightweight, high-performance clusters," said Terra Soft CEO Kai Staats. "With the Mercury MultiCore Plus SDK for PS3, the PS3 gaming console, and Terra Soft's Yellow Dog Linux operating system, users can affordably dive into the power of the Cell BE processor."

A Scientific Algorithm Library add-on including image and signal processing functions optimised for the Cell processor is scheduled for release this week.

The PS3's processing capability is already being harnessed for scientific purposes by the Folding@Home project. A Folding@Home client has been distributed by Sony as part of the PS3 firmware, and owners can choose to allow it to crunch data while the console would otherwise be idle. Folding@Home simulates the way proteins fold, and the results may contribute to the prevention or cure of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's.