From edd at debian.org  Sat Oct 27 19:36:15 2007
From: edd at debian.org (Dirk Eddelbuettel)
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 12:36:15 -0500
Subject: [Rd] Cell or PS3 Port
In-Reply-To: <47235AC1.9040302@sixfoursystems.com>
References: <47235AC1.9040302@sixfoursystems.com>
Message-ID: <18211.30479.866042.710923@ron.nulle.part>


On 27 October 2007 at 10:35, Ed Knutson wrote:
| I am interested in optimizing some of R's vector math functions to 
| utilize the SPE units of the Cell processor (commonly found in the 
| Playstation 3) and I am wondering if anyone has already done any work in 
| that area.  I can't find anything using the search page or Google. 
| (Admittedly it is difficult to search for information on a 
| one-letter-named programming language whose contributed documentation 
| intrinsically refers to "cells" frequently. :)  I'm assuming it will be 

See the r-devel archives for August where Doug Bates started a thread 
	[Rd] Compiling R for the Sony Playstation 3
with many posts.  

The upshot,as I recall, is the he 'simply' installed Ubuntu on his PS3 in
order to real software (read: Emacs, R) running on his 'dvd player' as he
calls it.

There is a lot of interest in making R work on things like the Cell as well
as in GPGPU frameworks, at least for subroutines and libraries (and I
understand that some work is ongoing in that area).  The main R thread will
probably remain single-threaded 'forever'.  Others may have more pertinent
comments.

Hope this helps, Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.



[Rd] Cell or PS3 Port
Dirk Eddelbuettel