UMBC Multicore Computing Center

August 25th, 2007 by tim finin

With support and collaboration from IBM, UMBC has established the UMBC Multicore Computing Center (MC2) to investigate applications of new parallel processing technologies, including the Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. We will integrate 12 IBM BladeCenter QS20s, each with dual 3.2-GHz CBEs into our existing Bluegrit supercomputing cluster, which includes a a 116 core PowerPC cluster. The new processors will be connected by Gigabit Ethernet and 20-Gbit/second Infiniband links.

So, what does this have to do with games? A lot.

The CBE was jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba and first used in Sony’s PS3. Game consoles can take advantage of high-performance computing to support their graphics and the CBE is what makes the PS3 special. But looking beyond speeding up 3D graphics, there are many more demands that games will make on processors — managing large artificial worlds, making computer controlled game characters more intelligent, adding speech and language processing, etc.

The UMBC MC2 will provide our game programs with a unique asset — a chance for students in the computer science track to learn about multicore and cell processors and, importantly, how to write programs to take advantage of them. Software engineers with experience with these new processor technologies are in high demand in the game industry as well as for any applications that have high computational demands.

Posted in Parallel programming, Programming, UMBC Research |

Related posts:

• Microsoft launches effort to exploit multicore processors
• Epic’s Tim Sweeney on “Programming for future CPUs and GPUs”
• Multi-core and cell processors for games

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