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IBM Plans to Open the Cell Processor
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."
"In this light, IBM, Toshiba and the third Cell partner, Sony Corp., are turning to the open-source community to drum up interest in the architecture."
Doesn't sound like they're particularly upset about it.
The original IBM compatible standard (what we just call X86 nowadays) took off when Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS and created the first "clone" of a "genuine" IBM PC. This undoubtedly resulted in explosive growth for Intel, who made the CPU. Now that IBM is manufacturing the chip (instead of Intel for the first IBM PC), it is absolutely in their best interest to make the Cell processor as mainstream as possible by opening up all of its specs.
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Why wouldn't Sony want IBM to do this. Since the platform specific game developer is going the way of the Dodo, how do you get an edge?
Perhaps by giving every anti-Microsoft fanatic video game freak an outlet? When licensed 3rd party support becomes even on both sides of the map, it will be consumer mods that make the difference to gamers. Can I mod chip it to play foreign games? Can I put vinyl kits on it? Can I use it to power my toaster?
Theoretically, one might be able to write some code that will allow you to play foreign games without having to void your warranty. How huge is that?
Also, Sony is going to need something extra to get people to buy it's system after a XBOX 360 Holiday season, and this may just be that.
This setup looks a lot like the inverse of IBM's greatest strategic loss: the PC. That time, IBM had the brand, and sold hardware to a maverick niche market of PC hobbyists. They viewed software, including the OS, as a necessary sidelight, and let Microsoft judo them out of their control of the market revolution they created. IBM later lost $20B as their market failure came home to roost, and never recovered the leadership they squandered.
This time, IBM is the necessary part in the Playstation, which is in the hands of this generation's maverick niche market: gamers. Their Cell processors give them Microsoft's opportunity: base the market in the demanding niche, and market their product outside of it, leveraging their market feedback and brand into the larger market, including supplying competitors to the original platform. IBM is flipping the script: selling hardware means opening the software promotes their sales, inverting Microsoft's formula of taking software proprietary to capture more of the market defined by the hardware.
It all looks great on paper. Especially the greater scalability and persistence of open software, compared to Microsoft's centralized, proprietary approach. Time will tell if IBM can manage the opportunity, competing against Microsoft, as well as Microsoft did in the 1980s - and better than Microsoft will in the 2000s.
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The reason why I mentioned "putting FP back into the curriculum" was, however, that it is my understanding that, if you're right, there's a good chance that programmers would prefer multithreading in imperative languages precisely because it'd be closer to what they'd be used to. So, by getting them used to FP, we'd see a "more fair" evaluation of the practicality of this approach.
Your idea seems to be that idealism would drive the CS curriculum, which then would drive the industry. My observation over the last 10 years has been the opposite. In 1996, CS freshman were learning Scheme and Haskell; today they are using Java, because "it's more practical and aligned with the industry" or some such excuse. But now that the bust has eliminated all the "I just want to get rich" CS students, maybe it will swing the other way.