SBIR-STTR Award

Over the past decade, the emergence of commodity Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) has had a profound impact on DOE scientific research programs. Then, in 2005, Sony, Toshiba and IBM (STI) introduced the Cell processor. Unlike the GPU, the Cell processor is a general purpose processing unit. However, like the GPU, the Cell has certain characteristics that make it attractive to the high performance scientific computing and visualization communities. Many in the high performance computing community look to the Cell as the basis for a next generation Petascale computing platform. This project will evaluate whether the Cell is a viable platform for rendering high performance graphics within the context of scientific visualization.

Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee:
An open-source open-GL driver for the Cell processor should find use in DOE high performance visualization applications, and should create the opportunity for scaling visualization and graphics into the Petascale regime

The Cell BE processor represents a technology trend towards the convergence of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). By creating an open source OpenGL driver for the Cell BE processor, this project will allow the Cell BE processor to be used for visualization and graphics rendering. This is a boon to the scientific and research community that is currently using cell-based machines for scientific calculations and would be able to leverage those machines for visualization also. Delivering this driver in open source has already fostered the growth of a community of users and researchers around it. The intellectual property generated from this project will continue to be important to the convergence of the GPU and CPU independent of the Cell BE processor itself. An OpenGL driver is required to enable the Cell BE processor to be a viable platform for high performance graphics rendering within the context of scientific visualization. This project creates that driver, first for individual Cell BE-based computers and then on compute clusters based on the Cell BE processor. The Phase I project validated that the Cell BE can be a viable platform for high performance graphics rendering within the context of scientific visualization. The subset driver in Phase I provided the proof of concept for Phase II, which is to develop the full OpenGL driver and optimize the performance to GPU-like levels.

Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee:
The commercial market for the intellectual property developed by creating the OpenGL driver for the Cell BE processor includes Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and Microsoft.