An experimental cell-based system to investigate latency hiding methods

提出了一种由一个头节点和四个计算节点组成的异构计算集群试验台的设计方案。该集群基于新发布的IBM Cell处理器，这是一种专门为图形和视频应用程序开发的多核高效计算引擎。头节点是一个基于ibm的双处理器刀片系统，而计算节点是索尼Playstation3，每个节点都包含一个单元处理器。之所以选择异构配置，是因为索尼Playstation3的价格非常有利。该测试平台将用于研究和实现通信延迟隐藏技术，这将允许更好的应用扩展。此外，大型计算能力将用于开发基于神经网络的生物活性模型，用于许多化合物（定量结构活性关系）。这些模型能够快速和准确地探索化学品的制药潜力，从而减少了开发新药所涉及的费用和时间。

This is a proposal to obtain a heterogeneous computational cluster testbed comprising a head node and four computational nodes. This cluster is based on the newly released IBM Cell processor, a multi-core highly efficient computational engine specifically developed to power graphics and video applications. The head node is a dual processor IBM-based blade system while the computational nodes are SONY Playstation3, each one comprising a single cell processor. The chosen heterogeneous configuration was chosen because of the very advantageous price of the SONY Playstation3. The testbed will be used to study and implement communications latency hiding techniques which will allow better application scaling. In addition, the large computational capabilities will be used in developing neural network-based models of biological activity for a number of chemical compounds (quantitative structure activity relationship). These models enable fast and accurate exploration of the pharmaceutical potential of  chemicals, reducing thus the expense and the time involved in the development of new pharmaceuticals.