[extropy-chat] Greetings

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 11:38:55PM -0800, Neil H. wrote:
> On 12/8/05, Derek Zahn <DerekZahn at msn.com> wrote:
> >
> > My primary interest has always been AI (I was a PhD student in AI back
> > then), and I recently was woken up from a temporary slumber when I read
> > about the specs of the upcoming PS3 gaming machine -- in terms of raw flops,

The flops are not that hot, but the SPEs can do very well with
in-register SIMD on integers. Think of a register as a modest-sized
small-integer array. And SPEs have oodles of registers.

> > the standard projections for processing power (if not storage or bandwidth)
> > got a kick in the butt by the gaming industry the last few years, and it
> > might almost be time to start paying attention again to AI again.

I'm glad other folks have noticed The Cell. I would like to point out
that a Cell simulator is available from IBM, if you run a modestly beefy
Fedora Core 4 (x86 or x86_64 are both supported). Performance is awful,
of course, but you can start coding and debugging now.

A primitive spiking neuron model (e.g. Amygdala) is likely to
do a couple of 10^6 realtime neurons peak on a single Cell. The memory
streams at 25 GByte/s max, so considerable cleverness in structure
compactness, layout, and access patterns (this is not a cache,
but you will have to fill up 8x256 MByte, so there will
be strides) will be required.

PS3 has been promised a Linux kit, and might come with 1-3 GBit Ethernet
ports each, so vanilla MPI can give you a modest supercomputer on a single
shelf (but make sure there's enough airflow).

So what are you going to do with it?
 
> 
> Hello Derek!
> 
> I'm actually a PhD student right now doing AI-ish things. Would you mind
> elaborating on what you worked on, and your thoughts on future directions?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20051209/af2def2f/attachment.bin>