Parallel Processing For Cardiac Simulations Using an Xbox 360

Foot-in-Mouth writes "Physorg has an article about a researcher, Dr. Simon Scarle at the University of Warwick's WMG Digital Laboratory, who needed to model some cardiological processes. Conventionally, he would requisition time on a university parallel-processing computer or use a network of PCs. However, Dr. Scarle's work history included gaming industry experience as a software engineer at a company associated with Microsoft Games Studio. His idea was that researchers could use Xbox 360s as an inexpensive parallel computing platform due to the console's hefty parallel processing-enabled GPU. He said, 'Although major reworking of any previous code framework is required, the Xbox 360 is a very easy platform to develop for and this cost can easily be outweighed by the benefits in gained computational power and speed, as well as the relative ease of visualization of the system.'"

Re:Why not the PS3?

[rlanctot]

Because "Dr. Scarle's work history included gaming industry experience as a software engineer at a company associated with Microsoft Games Studio."

ie he's had experience in programming for the platform, was likely used to using Visual Studio with XNA and likely had all the tools he needed to program for the 360 already.

Re:Why not a PC

[adisakp]

If you program C# Windows / Direct3D, programming, XNA for XBOX is easy to program for. You can actually start with XNA on the PC and most stuff will transfer over with minimal changes. You have access to the GPU and shader programming so GPGPU programming ideas can be ported as well.

The PS3 Linux is significantly more difficult to program for, has a different memory model (and programming architecture) for the SPU's, has very poor (compared to Visual Studio) debugging and programming IDE environment, etc. Not to mention that the latest version of the PS3 doesn't even support Linux. There is no GPU access so GPGPU algorithms available on the PC need to be manually ported to the PS3.

That said, if they actually did buy older PS3's, take the steep learning curve to SPU programming, port all of their code to a 100% custom platform with hard-to-use tools, and heavily optimize the SPU code, they would probably be running their algorithms significantly faster on PS3 SPU's than on the XBOX 360 GPU.

isn't this somewhat boring?

[Trepidity]

Apologies for the rhetorical question, but obviously GPGPU for scientific simulations isn't new. We've had a [slashdot.org] whole [slashdot.org] lot [slashdot.org] on [slashdot.org] that [slashdot.org] already [slashdot.org]. The only possible new thing could be using the Xbox360 for it. But as far as I can tell (confirmed by all the comments I've seen so far), there isn't even anything interesting about that--- this guy just used the Xbox360 because he was already familiar with the programming environment, not because it has any particular advantages over CUDA on a PC.

Re:Was there a risk assessment?

[Timesprout]

I am guessing that using the XBox as a parallel programming platform is pretty easy on your game disks.

Re:Why not the PS3?

[LucidLion]

This type of simulation can be and is being done using CUDA. In fact a talk is being given at the upcoming nVidia technology conference on this very subject. nVidia's website won't let me create a direct link, but if you click here [wingateweb.com] and then Session Catalog > Session ID 1036, you can read the abstract.

Re:Why not the PS3?

[drinkypoo]

Sony just canned the PS3 Linux install option. :)

I doubt he's using JUST the GPU. The 3x3.2GHz PowerPC processors in the Xbox 360 are pretty compelling. The PS3 MIGHT have more raw power but you're not actually even allowed to use its GPU unless you have first-string developer status. Scientific computing on the PS3 focuses on the Cell, and it seems like there's an awful lot of unuseful hardware wrapped around it.