[DuckieHo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kuntz Ehhhh Duckie, I don't think you are following why they chose to do it this way. You claim they could buy a 4850 for $85, this is incorrect, since this card needs to be plugged into something that is also running Windows Vista. Suddenly your $85 is now $1,000 per machine. The reason the Xbox 360 is better is because it's a complete computer for $199, which includes an Operating System and Development Library built into the cost. If you read the article, you'd note that a big part of this research was the visual output of the math being done to a Monitor/TV screen.

You are assuming that a professor at a University does not have an existing PC.... I would bet $1000 that he does have access to a PC. Even if it did cost $1000, the PC would be 20-40 times more powerful for 4-5 times the cost.

 

[sinaugustus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo You are assuming that a professor at a University does not have an existing PC.... I would bet $1000 that he does have access to a PC. Even if it did cost $1000, the PC would be 20-40 times more powerful for 4-5 times the cost.

and also takes 6-7 times the amount of power to run, your missing the point, the system is cheaper to buy and run over its lifespan, which looks good to investers on a project, 20 times the power dosnt look too good if it comes at 10 times the price

also look at the form factor.... and look at replacement cost, if one of the xboxs dies..your out ~$200, look at your pc alternative, lets say the psu shorts and takes the rig with it.....now what are your loses?

on a side note you all are completely missing the architecture differnce between the 360 and your pc , does your pc cpu have a DIRECT interconnect with your gpu? can your gpu and cpu both DIRECTLY access the same memory?...and it just keeps going on and on

 

[Hueristic]

 

[That_guy3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo Do you have a better parallel optimized API that I could use? Is OpenCL finalized yet? Please provide your many times of proof before insinuating ass talk. You missed a part too.... Why bother? When there are parallel programming APIs like CUDA and Stream avaliable? Xenos is a 500MHz 48 shader ATI GPU. He could have used Stream and just programmed on a better ATI GPU. A $85 HD4850 has 18 times the processing power. You know what's an even easier platform to develop for? A PC.

+ rep for simply being the brightest smartest member on overclock.net Its good to see the top member post!

Thank yo Duck

 

[Manyak]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sinaugustus and also takes 6-7 times the amount of power to run, your missing the point, the system is cheaper to buy and run over its lifespan, which looks good to investers on a project, 20 times the power dosnt look too good if it comes at 10 times the price also look at the form factor.... and look at replacement cost, if one of the xboxs dies..your out ~$200, look at your pc alternative, lets say the psu shorts and takes the rig with it.....now what are your loses?

You'll easily need 20 Xboxes to match the computational performance of a single $1k PC, so power cost is a lot less with a PC.

And investors don't care about the power/cost ratio at all. Investors care about how much the equipment will contribute to the result. If the research time gets reduced from 3 years to 1 year for example, then there won't be any question about it.

Edit: Oh, and not to mention, the Xbox is the most unreliable piece of hardware made today. I would rely on even a Compaq before relying on an Xbox.

 

[Kuntz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo You are assuming that a professor at a University does not have an existing PC.... I would bet $1000 that he does have access to a PC. Even if it did cost $1000, the PC would be 20-40 times more powerful for 4-5 times the cost.

You are incorrect. I will now quote all areas of the article which lead me to believe you are incorrect:

Quote:

A new study by a University of Warwick researcher has demonstrated that researchers trying to model a range of processes could use the power and capabilities of a particular XBox chip as a much cheaper alternative to other forms of parallel processing hardware. Dr Simon Scarle, a researcher in the University of Warwick’s WMG Digital Laboratory, wished to model how electrical excitations in the heart moved around damaged cardiac cells in order to investigate or even predict cardiac arrhythmias (abnormal electrical activity in the heart which can lead to a heart attack). To conduct these simulations using traditional CPU based processing one would normally need to book time on a dedicated parallel processing computer or spend thousands on a parallel network of PCs. Dr Scarle however also had a background in the computer games industry as he had been a Software Engineer at the Warwickshire firm Rare Ltd, part of Microsoft Games Studios. His time there made him very aware of the parallel processing power of Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) of the XBox 360, the popular computer games console played in many homes. He was convinced that this chip could, for a few hundred pounds, be employed to conduct much the same scientific modelling as several thousand pounds of parallel network PCs. The results of his work have just been published in the journal Computational Biology and Chemistry under the title of “Implications of the Turing completeness of reaction-diffusion models, informed by GPGPU simulations on an XBox 360: Cardiac arrhythmias, re-entry and the Halting problemâ€. The good news is that his hunch was right and the XBox 360 GPU can indeed be used by researchers in exactly the money saving way he envisaged. Simon Scarle said: “This is a highly effective way of carrying out high end parallel computing on “domestic†hardware for cardiac simulations. Although major reworking of any previous code framework is required, the Xbox 360 is a very easy platform to develop for and this cost can easily be outweighed by the benefits in gained computational power and speed, as well as the relative ease of visualization of the system.†However his research does have some bad news for a particular set of cardiac researchers in that his study demonstrates that it is impossible to predict the rise of certain dangerous arrhythmias, as he has shown that cardiac cell models are affected by a specific limitation of computational systems known as the Halting problem.

Since this argument is ridiculous I will leave my final argument as such; If a Peer-Reviewed journal featured an article written by a University Professor, Researcher, and Engineer, I am going to believe said article is accurate and factual.

 

[ocmooz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GBob314 Maybe he bought an XBox and didn't like playing Halo 3, so he wanted to justify his buying of the 360?

More likely a good friend or familly member of his suffered cardiac arrest while playing Halo 3.

Really though... Why bother? Unless MS is giving them XBoxes in an effort to boost sales. I know, I know, ignore the crazy person.

 

[Azazel]

I wonder what the total cost of downtime is when no work is getting done due to the red ring of death.

 

[trueg50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo I was running a P4 2.8GHz.... it took 10-15 mins to run my code. However, I finally got a C2D 2.8Hz so I have to go back to work now....

'bout time the developers get some love!

Though it is odd, at my work, the developers are always given way overpowered equipment (like 3.0 ghz C2Q's w/ 4gb of RAM and 7650GT's to replace 3.2ghz Pentium D's w/ 4gb of RAM and 7650GT's).

 

[DuckieHo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by trueg50 'bout time the developers get some love! Though it is odd, at my work, the developers are always given way overpowered equipment (like 3.0 ghz C2Q's w/ 4gb of RAM and 7650GT's to replace 3.2ghz Pentium D's w/ 4gb of RAM and 7650GT's).

Don't get me started.... the developers have been complaining about it for years.

Portfolio managers and traders get three LCDs and PC upgrades first. The most complex things that they ever run are things that we built for them....

 

[AMD+nVidia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo I was running a P4 2.8GHz.... it took 10-15 mins to run my code. However, I finally got a C2D 2.8Hz so I have to go back to work now....

Wait what?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo Don't get me started.... the developers have been complaining about it for years. Portfolio managers and traders get three LCDs and PC upgrades first. The most complex things that they ever run are things that we built for them....

I pretty sure you just insulted yourself

 

[DuckieHo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AMD+nVidia Wait what?

I kick off my code.... and have nothing to do for 10 mins except surf the net.

Quote:

I pretty sure you just insulted yourself

How? Management doesn't think developers should get the best PCs.... even though we need them since we are creating the apps for everyone.

 

[AMD+nVidia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo I kick off my code.... and have nothing to do for 10 mins except surf the net.

OHH I see ok. Cool that sounds nice

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo How? Management doesn't think developers should get the best PCs.... even though we need them since we are creating the apps for everyone.

The way you said it: "They're JUST using apps we wrote for them, it's not like they NEED anything nice."

Implying your apps aren't that nice

 

[Manyak]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AMD+nVidia OHH I see ok. Cool that sounds nice The way you said it: "They're JUST using apps we wrote for them, it's not like they NEED anything nice." Implying your apps aren't that nice

It implies that the apps can't be more resource demanding than what the developer's computers can offer, so they technically can't possibly need something better than the PCs the apps are developed on.

 

[Gill..]

Agreed with Duckie - developing for a RROD special 360 is just dumb at this point. Especially given the power of that GPU... hmm... 48 versus 800 (1600 for 5870)......let me think about this

I hope this guy isn't going for his masters or PHD... I'd bop him over the head and be like "Dude, do you know how many PPD you're getting per watt? Are you stupid?" And then I'd toss him out of the graduate program. If he did it in 2005 - then I'd applaud him. Too little too late.

CUDA and Stream are here (Stream still needs some love)...that is the future of research, make no mistake about that.

Check my post from last night where I got my 4870 sucessfully crunching for [email protected] it takes 45 seconds what was taking my OC'd BE 940 @ 3.6 80 minutes.....

4870 crunching like a MADMAN for [email protected]: http://www.overclock.net/ati/570223-...ml#post7238681

See the sceenie if you don't believe me...I'll post a video soon too - you have to see the progress bar to believe it...it's absolutely nuts..

You tie that onto a new 5870... forget about it...

Support distributed programs on the PC - don't waste time, research dollars and energy on trying to mod it to work on a 5 year old console.

 

[AMD+nVidia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manyak It implies that the apps can't be more resource demanding than what the developer's computers can offer, so they technically can't possibly need something better than the PCs the apps are developed on.

Yes yes yes you can also look at it that way I was just trying to have some fun! Sheesh!

 

[zooterboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo Please provide your many times of proof before insinuating ass talk.

Welcome to my sig...

Quote:

Originally Posted by DuckieHo Most of the articles on this topic are from native writers obLIvious to the current state of GPGPU. They are more interested in the fact it is an XBox than the actual benefit when compared to other possible designs.

Fixed.

 

[Icekilla]

Totally agreed with duckie, you can build a rig with a quad core, 2 GPU's, let's say 3 HD4850 and 4GB of RAM, and that would be enough power for doing what 20-30 xbox 360 consoles would do in the same time, and it would cost less.

Again, this is a guy from Rare, this guy is supposed to be a professional when working with the Xbox 360 for app writing, but as I said, an Xbox 360 is way less powerful than our modern GPU's. And it's all about power when doing a parallel computing project. Ask anyone in a college IT class, or a researcher who uses parallel computing and cutting edge supercomputers for his research and they will surely tell you the same thing.

EDIT: If they use Linux on the computer, they could get more juice out of it

 

[AMD+nVidia]

Maybe they can get all the xBox's donated?

 

[vtech1]

and your point is ...