We tested several different algorithms written in Sieve C++ on a dual Intel® Xeon® 5300 quad-core PC, AGEIA's PhysX™ processor and the Cell BE based Sony PlayStation®3.  The test programs were compiled using the Sieve C++ compiler and linked with the appropriate Sieve runtime for the target platform.  Results were measured from program executions across a sequentially increasing number of processor cores.

The tests described in this document were conducted using the following algorithms:

• CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check)
• Julia Ray-Tracing
• Matrix Multiply
• Mandelbrot

 

Results for PC

In the case of the Matrix Multiply, where the algorithm is performing a large number of random memory reads, the hardware limitations of RAM access become a bottleneck.

The tests also proved the overhead in Sieve implementations to be acceptably small.  CRC, Julia Ray-Tracing and Matrix Multiply executed just 6.1%, 1.03% and 1.04% slower respectively than comparable non-sieve executables on a single core processor.

 

Results for Cell

 

Utilizing the 6 available SPE’s on the PlayStation®3 CRC, Mandelbrot and Julia Ray-Tracing showed a performance improvement of 462%, 557% and 572% respectively over execution on a single SPE.

The Cell architecture is extremely well suited to Sieve, in this example we have the PPE handling the sieve runtime and scheduling and the SPE’s performing all the work.

Sieve will also be able to compile code optimized to take advantage of Cell’s SIMD instruction sets.

 

PhysX™

Codeplay successfully demonstrated Sieve running on AGEIA’s PhysX™ accelerator board at the Spring Processor Forum in San Jose in May 2006.  The Sieve system was able to compile C++ programs and exploit the powerful parallel processing capabilities of PhysX™.

 

Conclusion

These tests show the Sieve system to be a powerful and easy to use system for writing scalable and portable C/C++ programs which fully exploit all available processing elements.

The successful testing of Sieve on PlayStation®3 and AGEIA’s PhysX™ prove that the Sieve system can easily be ported to and fully exploit the capabilities of new and unusual parallel processor architectures.

 

1. Compile once for a given platform – execute on a varying number processor cores

PlayStation® is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
Intel® is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation
Xeon® is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation
AGEIA™ PhysX™ is a trademark of AGEIA™ Technologies, Inc.