The Mercury Cell Accelerator Board (CAB) is Mercury Computer Systems’ latest Cell Broadband Engine (BE) processor-based offering and the first product with Cell Technology for commercially available PC workstations, according to the company. Featuring the Mercury MultiCore Plus Advantage, the CAB will deliver 180 GFLOPS of performance in a PCI Express ATX form factor. That makes the CAB suitable for compute-intensive applications such as rendering, ray tracing, video and image processing, and signal processing. As with the company’s other Cell BE processor-based offerings, the CAB supports Linux via a Yellow Dog Linux BSP (board support package) from Terra Soft Solutions.
The MultiCore Plus Advantage employs middleware that abstracts hardware capabilities and manages the distribution of data across multiple computing elements working in tandem. The package includes software development tools and libraries such as the MultiCore Framework, optimized Scientific Algorithm Library, and the Mercury Trace Analysis Tool and Library. By leveraging the MultiCore Plus Advantage, users can benefit from patented cooling technologies, lightweight system-on-chip management software, multicore implementations of key algorithms, visualization tools designed for clusters, algorithm tuning, and more. An available Cell Workstation Development System includes a CAB, high-end dual-processor Opteron workstation running Linux and Windows, and the MultiCore Plus Advantage software.
AVAILABILITYPrototypes of the Mercury CAB are available now in limited volumes. Production availability is planned for the first quarter of 2007. PRICING
Prices for the Mercury CAB start at $7999 for one board. Volume discounts are available.FOR MORE INFORMATION
Visit www.mc.com/cell