IBM Plans to Open the Cell Processor 430
morcheeba writes "According to an EETimes article, IBM is planning on releasing the full specifications and software libraries for the powerful processor that will be in the Playstation 3. The goal is to stimulate open-source development for other applications of the chip. The article doesn't mention if there will be some affordable development systems for all these programmers -- I'm hoping for a ps3 devkit." From the article: "IBM is eager to find other opportunities for Cell, but it's going to take a lot of software work...Going to the open-source community makes sense, because they could attract a lot of pretty smart programmers who could spin out software and applications for Cell."
Sign me up! (Score:2, Interesting)
All 3 consoles = IBM? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
The more people that buy Cells to put in to widgets the lower the cost for Sony.
Calling all pawns... (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that the only cell device is the PS3, and that sony would sooner slit their wrists than let users write their own code for it, we can only assume that IBM is hoping somebody else will pick up the cell for consumer devices.
Applicable uses (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting Progression (Score:4, Interesting)
Functional Compilers, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Why", you may wonder, but the answer is simple: Referential transparency or any kind of confinement of side-effects makes for easy parallelisation, which is what these Cell thingies are supposed to rock at.
This might be the one thing that will put FP back into the undergraduate curriculum.
-- Christoph
This can only help the OSS community (Score:4, Interesting)
I predict that the most innovative and enjoyable apps and games will come from developers who are working independently, on thier own, or in small groups, out of pure love of code. That is the way it has always been.
It has still yet to be explained to me (Score:4, Interesting)
Open HARDWARE movement (Score:5, Interesting)
This day and age, such an argument is complete BUNK. Hardware design is done on computers and chip specifications are more often than not specified in VHDL or Verilog--the "source code" of hardware if you will. Not only is design and simulation within the reach of even hobbyists, the end result is very similar to software in characteristics. While IBM is not completely opening things up to the point of showing the "source code" of the Cell processor, it is a great step to see all the specifications etc. without encumbrances.
Quite frankly I'm surprised the open source movement hasn't advocated open hardware much more vigourously. After experiences around NVidia and ATI and Intel you'd have to be a fool not to realise that open hardware isn't just an interesing idea, it is NEEDED for the success of open software.
Re:Functional Compilers, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:heh... (Score:1, Interesting)
I really like this idea, personally. Full disclosure on hardware is always good. Regardless of running Linux, or not.
Cell: new desktop processor, or video-card killer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux? Sure. The "PPE" portion of the Cell is a POWER64, which Linux already runs on. The "SPE" engines are effectively going to need their own kind of OS to manage them, but you could start with a mostly-user-space API and move it into the Linux kernel after people have figured out what that OS should really look like. This is all new stuff.
Looking at the CELL architecture overview [scea.com], though, the Cell doesn't look to me like a desktop replacement. It looks like a video card replacement. Think about it: the biggest piece of closed-source, proprietary hardware in your PC right now is your video card, with its sekrit interfaces and binary-only drivers. We're already starting to see a movement towards more general-purpose use of that hardware with things like nVidia's Cg toolkit [nvidia.com]. The CELL is the logical next step in that direction. You'll have a video card that runs Linux (or, ideally, a video card that acts as just another (heterogeneous) processor in your system).
Re:It has still yet to be explained to me (Score:5, Interesting)
They have to present the divisions between these SPE processors, or some abstraction which becomes the divisions between them by the time the program is run, visible to the programmer-- since the programmer is the one parallelizing the code. What do these divisions look like to the programmer? Threads? Processes? "Cells"?
Think "Beowulf Cluster" in your living room (Score:5, Interesting)
The cell system workload sharing system is apparently accessible through the general bus so it can theoretically farm tasks out to any Cell on the same network. So if you've got a WiFi network between your PS4, HDTV, TiVo, Stereo, and cell-powered PDA your video games (or PDA) could take advantage of those other devices' unused clock cycles.
Here's some A to RTF.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-1
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cell-2
Re:Linux anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope I didn't just sum up your links
IMB PCs Running Everything (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the CELLs got so much horsepower the user wouldn't notice a performance hit at all!
The CELL if it proves as capable a some claim could very well be an INTEL and more importantly a WINTEL killer.
I think APPLE isn't talking to INTEL about their chips but they are instead talking to IBM about the CELL.
Re:It has still yet to be explained to me (Score:2, Interesting)
So the most likely method of running Linux on such a beast would be to code everything for the SPE's and have the kernel itself running on the PPE.
See slides starting at http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGD
How to Sell the Cell? (Score:3, Interesting)
IBM should release a version of the Cell on a PCI or faster BUS card, or even some sort of crazy processer adapter thingy that one can buy so that Open source programers/users or other interested parties can start using the Cell right away.
The [3D rendering/complex math/video encoding] crowd would love a $200 card that they could just plug in to speed up their rendering buy a factor of 10x.
Steps for Opening Cell (Score:5, Interesting)
(2) Give it to taiwanese motherboard makers to make microatx mobos on the cheap. Aim for $40 for lower speed ones and $100 for full speed Cells.
(3) Put out all the specs of the Cell and any possible firmware sources online, and put them under the BSD license.
(4) Provide licenses to other devleopers to make cheaper versions of the Cell.
(5) Watch Linux and NetBSD grow on it. Watch cisco use it on their high-throughput routers and other manufacturers use it. Watch the app base grow.
(6) Profit!
Alternatively sit on it and let it rot like Palm is doing with BeOS.
Re:Sony must have approved this (Score:5, Interesting)
Each Cell is given a GUID, a global identifier, [theregister.co.uk] and will come with a crypto-signature authenticating it as a genuine DRM secure chip.
You can't defeat the system without (1) extracting secret keys from each chip one-by-one, or (2) generating a fake crypto signature to falsely authenticate a non-DRM enforcing chip. If you do manage to extract a key from one of the chips and they find out about it, they will place that key on a revokation list and it will become useless. So each chip you manage to rip and extract a key is good for creating one "liberated" system, and you still have to be extremely careful that no one can ever detect that you have done so.
The Pentium 3 unique ID numbers got killed off because of public outrage, and that system was nothing compared to what they've built into the CELL processor. It's about time we see some coverage of this aspect of the chip, and refuse to buy any CELL chips or CELL hardware unless these UNIQUE PROCESSOR IDENTIFIERS are removed.
-
Re:What I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sony must have approved this (Score:4, Interesting)
Go ahead, explain to me how people are given VISA cards and are forbidden to know their own 'key'. Go ahead, explain to me how your VISA card is designed to self destruct and destroy your key and destroy your account and destroy any money in that account if you attempt to read your key from your card.
In case anyone is confused by this, the system is based on RSA keys. That means there are two halves. One half is the public ID number. The other half is the secret key locked inside your chip. It is this secret half that denies you control and ownership of your own computer. It is the secret half they prevents your software from working if you attempt to alter it. It is this secret half that controls and restricts your ability to connect over the internet. It is this secret half that prevents you from reading or altering your own files. The Trusted Computing specification REQUIRES that such DRM enforcement chips be boobytrapped and selfdestruct if you attempt to get your key, and the specification REQUIRES that files be irretrivably lost and any backups be unusable if the chip glitches and loses this key (or if you attempt to read out your key and the chip deliberately destroys it).
This is a million times worse than the old Pentium 3 CPU-IDs.
-