I've been working off-and-on for a few months on devising some patches to R to make it much happier with a Cell processor; to be honest I've not had much time to work at it lately.
Douglas is right that it is mostly a PPC64 sort of architecture; taking real advantage of the hardware is going to require support for a different BLAS (that knows how to handle the SPUs...) be patched into R's configure scripts. Beyond that, there may be a few more things that can be done to make R run "stupidly fast" on ps3 or IBM Cell blades. --e On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Douglas Bates wrote: > Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 08:52:35 -0500 > From: Douglas Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: R-devel List <r-devel@r-project.org> > Subject: Re: [Rd] Compiling R for the Sony Playstation 3? > > On 8/1/07, Marc Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> On Wed, 2007-08-01 at 11:13 -0500, Douglas Bates wrote: >>> Has anyone installed Linux on a Sony Playstation 3 and compiled R for it? > >> Doug, >> >> I don't have any personal experience with both Linux and R on the PS3, >> but do know folks who have run Linux successfully on that platform. >> >> Here are some links that you might find helpful to at least cover the >> first part: >> >> http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/manual.html >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_3 >> >> http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/19/fedora-linux-up-and-running-on-playstation-3-with-video/ >> >> >> There are additional links, as usual, on the Wikipedia page. > > I did successfully install Ubuntu 7.04 ("feisty") on a Playstation 3. > Once you have Ubuntu installed you can use the standard package > management tools for Debian/Ubuntu to install the r-base-core, > r-recommended and r-base-dev packages. Those packages are for R-2.4.1 > but I had no trouble installing and checking the most recent versions of > R from the SVN site. > > Essentially the Playstation 3 becomes a typical Ubuntu system with all > the tools from Ubuntu. At present X11 uses the framebuffer device so > the graphics is poor by X11 standards and very poor by gamer's > standards. > > Overall it is quite amazing given that the PS3 with a 60GB hard drive is > now being sold in the U.S. for $500 and that includes a Blu-ray DVD > drive and full 1080p HDMI interface. At $500 it is one of the cheapest > Blu-ray DVD players, which is what I bought it for. It's great to be > able to run R on my DVD player. > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
