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anyone doing embedded IBM Cell work?

Sony, Toshiba, and IBM have jointly created the Cell processor. I've read, here and there, that Toshiba may use it for HDTV. I'm curious if anyone around here is already working on embedded Cell projects, or knows of people who are.

I've decided to focus on the IBM Cell because it is used in the Sony Playstation 3. This combines my interest in game development with my previous experience optimizing a high-end 64-bit processor (the DEC Alpha, circa 1996..1998). After learning the i486 I never found Intel processors to be all that interesting or all that good. Just gratuitously complicated and a pain in the butt. I've pretty much been spinning my wheels for 9 years waiting for a good commodity CPU to come along. To me, the appeal of the Cell is it's interesting as a performance architecture, it will have broad initial support in the game market (even if the PS3 ends up being the #3 console due to price), and it's not limited to the game market (for example, IBM Blade servers, and whatever Toshiba does).

Cheers, Brandon Van Every

Reply to
Brandon J. Van Every
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The real question is will enough details be available for the peripheral chips inside the PS3 so one could really use it (I would port my DPS on it if I see a chance). The Cell CPU seems documented well enough (publically) and it is indeed like a dream come true, a true 64-bit PPC and all.

Dimiter

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Brand> Sony, Toshiba, and IBM have jointly created the Cell processor. I've

Reply to
Didi

There are already Linuxes available for the PS3. I believe they can't access the Graphics Processing Unit, and maybe some other things, I haven't completely read up on that yet. Still, a lot can be accomplished. That's fine be me; as long as I can write Cell ASM code. I only need to learn the skill in order to get paying work. A secondary goal is to contribute to open source workarounds, such as framebuffer libraries that run only on the Cell, completely without the GPU. It would be nice to be able to do indie game development on the PS3, but it may not turn out to be important to me. The PS3 is basically a "poor man's Cell system" at $600, compared to Mercury's Cell Accelerator Board being a "rich man's system," $8K !

Cheers, Brandon Van Every

Reply to
Brandon J. Van Every

I had a brief look at some of the documentation of one.

Indeed so. "For now", whatever this may mean. I could live with that if I know where the display memory is so I can copy my off-screen buffers there (that's what I do anyway now); however, if they have some more hoops for me I'll have to forget it, I have no time for playing in someone elses circus.

There are other things indeed. The so called "companion chip" is not publically documented, and this is how the disk(s), Ethernet and USB are accessed; the Linux document says USB should be accessible, while Ethernet should go through some hoops. I hope the latter will change eventually; if I cannot port my entire stack - including the lowest level - I would see this again as a part in someone elses circus... As for the disks, I would expect they will not be that hard to find (ATA registers and all) so chances are they did not bother a lot hiding them, this should be easy.

I am really curious how things will develop with the documentation on the PS3; I will appreciate any news on that.

Dimiter

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Brand> > > I've decided to focus on the IBM Cell because it is used in the Sony

Reply to
Didi

Probably that it is up to nVidia whether an OpenGL driver will be released or not.

-a

Reply to
ammonton

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