Mercury Leverages PS3 Cell For Multi-Use SDK

Ahead of next week's SIGGRAPH 2007 graphics conference, computing systems and software provider Mercury Computer Systems has announced the release of a new software development kit designed to leverage the PlayStation 3's Cell processor order to provide users with low-cost, high-speed computing. Called the 'MultiCore Plus SDK for PS3 - Base Package,' the kit will partner the PlayStation 3's computing capabilities with Mercury's own development environment in order to drive “a broad range of applications” powered by the console's Cell Broadband Engine. According to the firm, this opens up the console's potential applications to not only the gaming industry, but also for use within other industries that could benefit from accessible, high-end computing, such as research labs, oil & gas, universities, and biotech. In addition, Mercury's marketing and strategic alliance VP Joel Radford notes that those customers who require more robust solutions will be able to “migrate seamlessly to more sophisticated hardware solutions from both Mercury and IBM” by leveraging Mercury's software alongside Terra Soft's Yellow Dog Linux. The SDK is not the first project to take advantage of the PS3's capabilities outside of the realm of gaming. Sony and Stanford University partnered earlier this year for the Folding@Home distributed computing project, which uses the console to aid in calculations relating to the study of protein folding and protein folding diseases. "We've seen a tremendous amount of interest in leveraging the PS3 as a Cell development system and as a compute node for lightweight, high-performance clusters," said Kai Staats, CEO of Terra Soft Solutions. "With the Mercury MultiCore Plus SDK for PS3, the PS3 gaming console, and Terra Soft's Yellow Dog Linux operating system, users can affordably dive into the power of the Cell BE processor."