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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."
is how does Sony feel about this?
Holy crap! That's amazing. Now, is this "fully open" a la' "Shared Source" or "fully open" as in "you have the same docs we do?" And what's with the comment about hardware discounts?
-theGreater.I just realized this means both next-gen consoles and the GameCube all use IBM processors. Impressive. Now I hope they can hang on to the Mac market, and maybe both will benefit from advances in the other.
I guess if they encourage development outside of the Sony realm, they'd be fostering a 'Splinter Cell?'
From TFA:
So it sounds like IBM is working on porting Linux to it.
IBM wants open source dev on cells like MS wants developers coding for Windows. It's an sales tool to convince manufacturers to source their parts.
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.
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.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
This could have a good plus side for many developers. One of the issues that I have been getting into lately is the open source appliance development. Previously I have been using xbox's and more recently the mac mini. One of the problems that I have had in developing software, tools and libaries is that I am often stuck with a lack of alternatives in hardware and performance. by having open plans for a high performance platform it will potentially give or open entirely new roads in development.
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Good thinking, IBM. Now, let's get SML/NJ, Haskell, and O'Caml ported to these things.
"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
Sony must have given its approval for releasing this information. It could not happen without them.
If Sony did not know, and IBM made this move without their approval, I could see Sony NEVER buying from IBM again. That is too big a risk for IBM. Heck, most companies would think twice.
Will it be easier to make a mod chip if people know how the processor works? Or did Sony add their DRM elsewhere? Who knows. IBM is not releasing the blueprints for the Playstation 3, just the processor.
Sony is a big company that hires smart people. Maybe they figured out hiding the electronics will not prevent reverse engineering. Maybe the new PS3 has some technology that makes it difficult to mod.
Maybe this is like Microsofts WMV, it is unhackable, nobody can get it to play a stream if DRM v9 is enabled. Not one person on the planet. And it has been over a year now.
For the PS3, they don't need for their game machine to be unhackable forever, just until the PS4 comes out. :)
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Of course, it would benefit Sony too.
Really there isn't too much of a story here. It is only a story because Sony is involved. If Sony wasn't using the Cell in the PS3 and the Cell was just some new chip from IBM, they would be doing the exact same thing anyways. We tend to think of the Cell as the "PS3 chip", but really the PS3 is just the first product to market to use it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Something this high-profile will help the business world see even more clearly the sheer, unadulterated power of Open Source.
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.
Technoli
Exactly what do the SPEs *do* in a timesharing OS such as Linux? Are the SPEs all parcelled out to processes on an individual basis, like normal processors would be? Are the SPEs attached to the same process as their corresponding normal-CPU PPC core, and the SPE's onboard memories just gets copied to main memory and then overwritten on every single context switch? Or what?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Nice to see someone as important as IBM realising the importnace of open HARDWARE. I've found that until recently the concept has been overlooked or even derided. Even open software advocates didn't "get it" and said it could never work, becasue hardware is different--the argumant was that hardware isn't something individuals or small companies could influence becasue of the high cost of entry, and big companies needed to make money off licensing closed IP to fund development and production of new hardware.
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.
Linux Insider is running a couple of editorials speculating about running Linux on the 'Cell'. The bold prediction? 'the Linux developer community will, virtually en masse, abandon the x86 in favor of the new machine.'
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.
It seems to me that this is a first step by IBM to try and move the Cell more into the foreground of computing i.e. to start transitioning computers over to start using Cell instead of x86. Going to the open source community with this project is the only feasible way to do this anymore, really. As much as big companies might like to, they will not be able to put in near the amount of effort or creativity that open source can provide.
As well, I think that moving to Cell would be a very positive step for the computer industry as a whole, helping it to get out of a rut that it seems to have fallen into. The benefits are enormous, the least of which is that if Cell starts becoming standard, average computing power of a desktop will skyrocket, allowing for brand new, highly computing intensive applications to be developed.
This has the sound of the next Slashdot Fortune Cookie in the making -- or should I say in the baking?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
--
make install -not war
Buy a PS3?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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, 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. 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).
Cell is a multipurpose system. It's main claim to fame is a low-level logic that allows it to farm tasks out to other Cells it connects to dynamically. One Cell is pretty potent and will likely be able to handle the needs of a typical HDTV so IBM hopes every TV, TiVo, and stereo system has a Cell.
. ars . ars
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
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
... not every processor is documented. In fact, the documentation for a lot of high volume processors isn't available. I'd like PSP docs, or docs on the processor in the ipod, or even the processor in the disposable digital cameras or the VMU game system -- but none of these docs are publicly available. The hardware manual for the G5 PowerPC was finally published last November, over a year after apple started selling the hardware.
So, no, the documentation doesn't always get released.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
IBM ditched their PC business days before they announced the CELL chip was shipping and given the fact that IBM claims the CELL can multiple OSes simultaneously and has 10 or so cores my guess is all you would need to do would be to write virtualizing software for the CELL and then run anything you want on top of that.
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.
how do i respode to a message?
you are obviously a script.
I've got my own project on there, in a bid to develop a totally parallel OO-based processor, but not had much time to work on that recently.
Those interested in Open Hardware should visit this and similar sites, to see what is happening out there, whether or not they believe the idea could work in practice. Why? Because it is an excellent source of ideas, and ideas are what keep all the IT markets moving.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Which is of course quite funny because Sony opted to use a dedicated GPU instead of the Cell for rendering the graphics.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The PowerPC element (PPE) of the Cell is not simply a G4 or G5 processor. It's am much simpler design overall. It only issues two instructions per clock cycle, compared to eight on a G4, and is strictly in-order execution only, which complicates optimization on a multi-tasking general purpose computer.
Those fancy vector units are also not tuned for general purpose computing. The 250+ GFLOP numbers that have been widely quoted are for single percision mathematics with non-standard rounding. There is a stricter double percision mode available, but it's a full order of magnitude slower.
(1) Port GCC to it, optionally another much more optimized compiler that is compatible with gcc.
(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.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I can't help but wonder if this is directly related to IBM's decision to sell their PC business to Lenovo. IBM has watched counless Linux geeks mod the XBox and install their OS of choice. If it were to take off like wildfire, this kind of modding would be potentially dangerous to the traditional OEM PC market, because it would mean that cheap (like $199) machines that can be made to run a powerful OS and do things like MythTV and the like could subvert the normal PC market. Sure, the market for modded Xboxen is small, and confined to hobbyists, but if the architecture were open and you didn't have to mod it, a lot more people would do it.
Of course if you aren't an OEM, this looks much less terrifying. In fact, it starts looking more and more like an opportunity. So a company like IBM can sell its money-losing OEM business and get into the game system market with no worries about what happens to x86 if the new consoles start to hurt the PC.
Maybe they weren't thinking "Let's get rid of this money-losing PC business." Maybe they were thinking "Let's kill x86 by building a cheaper PC market on another architecture, staring with a console, but expanding into other appliances. We'll open it up so that people get interested, Linux will be running on it in no time, new Linksys and Netgear routers will use it, and then on to other appliances we haven't even imagined yet. It'll find its way into PCs, and PCs will suddenly be as cheap as a console. Come to think of it, before we do any of this, let's schedule a meeting with Lenovo ... suckers."
What else is out there anyway? The main contenders are PPC and Intel. Both Intel and AMD produce x86/64 chips only. Sure everyone also produces arm/strongarm chips, but theyre still weak, the fastest strongarm from Intel is used on higher end PDAs.
Whats left is MIPS, Ultrasparc, PA-RISC, Alpha and special purpose FPGA chips.
MIPS is dead. SGI was producing servers on Itanium which also died.
Ultrasparc is dying in favor of x64. Sun guards its IP jealously. Low throughput but high floating and thread performance.
PA-RISC gives the best bang for the MHz. Good float, everything else runs too hot for now. Old old architecture.
Alpha was killed by HP. They'll try to sell you Itanium or PARISC before they sell you an Alpha. Development on it has completely stopped since 21264c. And I mean COMPLETELY.
FPGA chips are less efficient, and better use an ARM than an fpga chip.
So the two champions are PPC (and its derivative, Cell) and x86/x64.
Architecturally, PPC, and a 64-bit-only x64 are efficient. But IBM has been trying to push PPC in the market, working hard on a grand plan to take the market dominance away from x86. Look at all their offerings for Linux on PPC. They're prepping up this combination against wintel... and any usage of PPC means profits for them and Motorola, mostly to IBM in the higher end.
The choice is rather easy. If you will not use an IBM chip for a higher-end game console, what will you choose?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky