Monday, February 11, 2008
Final Year Project Proposal
Title: Multi-threaded wave simulation for oceans using the Playstation 3’s Cell Processor
Proposer: Michael Stowell
Degree Pathway(s): Computer Games Software Development BSc
Description:
This project comprises of two main parts:
Creating / using another persons solution as the basis of a software rasterizer for the PS3, due to the lack of any kind of graphics API for the open source PS3 development tools
The main part of the project being a study into a number of different methods of simulating waves, then making an attempt to optimize these for the PS3’s Cell processors SPE’s in order to make them as efficient as possible, this must also be scalable (I.e number of SPE’s responsible for the simulation). Comparing the performance outcomes of each method against that of current PC dual core architecture
Expected Outcome(s):
I predict that with the correct optimizations using the SPE’s that the CELL can greatly outperform a Intel Core 2 Duo dual core machine with regards to the speed in which it can process the wave simulation data. Of course this is all dependent on the amount of processing power required to render the output correctly on the CELL, with the PC having the rendering all carried out by the graphics card it is possible that the PC may still be faster even with optimizations.
I would like to be able to answer a number of questions through my research, being whether or not it is even necessary to carry out multi-threading, how multi-threading can improve the results of a non multi-threaded simulation and have an analysis of how performance changes when the number of threads / SPE’s is greater / lower.
The results will be displayed by a logical analysis of both systems outputs at varying levels of calculation intensive processes using a frame counter and a number of performance measuring tools in order to serve as an indication of my results. If it is possible with the results of the SPE scaling I would like to determine the equation of a graph showing the correlation between number of threads and performance.
Equipment Required:
Playstation 3 retail console.
Any PS3 compatible Linux Distribution.
HDMI / Component compatible screen.
PC for development.
Staff Expertise:
Andrew Williams : Linux / Multi-threading
Phil Carlisle : 3D Rendering techniques
Estimated Costs Of Any Special Purchases:
N/A Equipment already purchased
Nature Of Academic Challenge: The nature of this project is to research into the mathematics and work of other people who have followed similar studies into wave simulation on computer hardware in an effort to improve on these methods and effectively optimize these for the CELL processor as efficiently as possible. This will also serve as a basis into researching how effectively the threading capabilities of the CELL processor are compared to the current threading techniques on Dual Core PC architecture.