Hi all,
I’m thinking of making a custom H/W device with CUDA-enabled GPU.
Because of the cost, I am considering powerpc chip for the CPU.
Several linux that CUDA supports are also working on ppc.
So, does anybody know if CUDA runs on powerpc platform (whatever it is) or at least we can
make it work without too much hassle?
Thanks in advance and happy new year!
I don’t think there is any driver support for it as of now; I saw someone ask for SPARC support before and they were told that only x86/x64 linux is supported. Perhaps since you are still using linux though, the CUDA development team could just recompile the driver for you to use (without having to make a lot of changes to the code).
No, CUDA does not run on PPC linux. The Linux versions of CUDA support only 32 and 64-bit Intel-compatible CPUs.
Has anyone tried using CUDA on the Intel Atom CPU? It natively supports the x86_64 instruction set, though I’m not sure that I’ve seen an Atom motherboard with a PCI-Express x16 slot yet. That might make a nice embedded CUDA platform if anyone can find a good motherboard.
Update: It looks like Via has defined a Mini-ITX 2.0 standard with a PCI-Express x16 slot. The VB8001 includes the 64-bit Via Nano CPU and a PCI-Express 1.0 x16 slot. No idea if that would work with a speedy single-slot card like the 9800 GT. (Mobo/CPU + 4GB RAM + 9800GT = $162 + $120 + $32 = $314 for a barebones CUDA node, if it works.)
What’s interesting is that you can use the 9400m Northbridge with the Atom, and have a very low-power, low-cost CUDA-enabled system. There are promises that NVIDIA will also release an IGP Northbridge for VIA’s Nano.