[Insight-users] ITK on Cell Broadband Engine

[Blezek, Daniel J., Ph.D.]

Hi Daniele,

  We are still exploring how best to use the Cell.  In general, the PPU
is a little underpowered, but will still run ITK very well, and the
SPU's can be used for the "heavy lifting". 
 
I think you will have the best success modifying the MultiThreader to
run on the SPU, this is the mode we currently work in.  However, the
overhead of C++ burdens the limited local cache of each SPU, so we also
write very tiny C routines for the processing.  In principle, this model
fits very well with ITK, but requires re-writing inner loops.  You could
try to run ITK directly on the SPU, but I think you will end up swaping
overlays in and out.

Best regards,
-dan


-----Original Message-----
From: Daniele Domenichelli [mailto:daniele.domenichelli at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 8:48 AM
To: Blezek, Daniel J., Ph.D.
Cc: insight-users at itk.org
Subject: Re: [Insight-users] ITK on Cell Broadband Engine

Hi Daniel,

I don't know yet which segmentation and elastic registration algorithms
I will use, I will probably try several.

I will try to optimize single algorithms for the SPU, but I have a
couple of other ideas:

 - Modify itk::MultiTreader to run each pthread on the single SPU.
 - Modify SetInput - GetOutput mechanism to run each filter of the
pipeline to run on a single SPU without data to be sent back to the main
memory.
 - Use "__attribute__ ((aligned(16)))" pixel types

Do you think this is possible? Do you have any other ideas about what
could be modified to improve performances?

Regards,
Daniele



2008/5/13 Blezek, Daniel J., Ph.D. <Blezek.Daniel at mayo.edu>:
> Hi Daniele,
>
>   Our newly created lab has been working on this since October last  
> year.  The Cell architecture doesn't lend itself to a straight port of

> ITK, though ITK compiles an the PPU nicely.  What I suspect you might 
> do  is port an individual filter to the SPU, which is our approach.
>
>   Do you have any more specifics? or would like to discuss in more  
> detail?
>
>  Regards,
>  -dan
>
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: insight-users-bounces at itk.org
>  [mailto:insight-users-bounces at itk.org] On Behalf Of Daniele 
> Domenichelli
>  Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 11:41 AM
>  To: insight-users at itk.org
>  Subject: [Insight-users] ITK on Cell Broadband Engine
>
>  Hello,
>
>  I'm starting to develop an imaging application that will run on IBM 
> Cell  BE.
>  I successfully used ITK for some applications, so I was guessing if I

> could use them on that architecture.
>  Anyone tried to use or to optimize any ITK algorithms on Cell?
>
>
>  Thanks,
>  Daniele Domenichelli
>
>
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