Abstract

Multi-core platforms have proven themselves able to accel-erate numerous HPC applications. But programming data-intensive applications on such platforms is a hard, and not yet solved, problem. Not only do modern processors favor compute-intensive code, they also have diverse architectures and incompatible programming models. And even after making a difficult platform choice, extensive programming effort must be invested with an uncertain performance out-come. By taking the plunge on an irregular, data-intensive application, we present an evaluation of three platform types, namely the generic multi-core CPU, the STI Cell/B.E., and the GPU. We evaluate these platforms in terms of applica-tion performance, programming effort and cost. Although we do not select a clear winner, we do provide a list of guide-lines to assist in platform choice and development of similar data-intensive applications.