Playing with a seismic PlayStation cluster
Chris J. Bednar, J. Bee Bednar · 2007
In this presentation we discuss seismic processing on a Sony-IBM-Toshiba PlayStation III (PS3) cluster. Rather than focus on only one computationally intensive algorithm, we discuss various aspects of the more popular seismic imaging algorithms. We discuss the nature of software optimization in the context of the PS3's computational engine (CELL) and memory limitations as it relates to raytracing, Kirchhoff imaging, common azimuth imaging, one-way dual-domain imaging, full finite-difference two-way reverse-time imaging, and the closely related and perhaps more interesting seismic modeling. We compare computational speeds of the PS3's CELL processor with modern multi-core chips as produced by AMD and INTEL. Finally, we discuss the issues associated with domain decomposition and other such cluster computational schema unique to a multi-node cluster of PS3's.