Unleashing the Power of the Cell Broadband Engine

An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks is running a paper from the MPR Fall Processor Forum 2005 explores programming models for the Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) Processor, from the simple to the progressively more advanced. With nine cores on a single die, programming for the CBE is like programming for no processor you've ever met before."

Comments

PS3 Suggestion

[5, Troll]

The Sony PS3 seems a good development kit alternative for open source programmers, low-budget laboratories or even startup companies.
It will carry a Cell with a powerful graphic chipset, a hard drive, a good deal of ports, and a Linux distribution.

The problem I see, however, is that it is restricted to 256 MB of RAM.
This is very small in comparison with the data processing capabilities of the Cell. Also, it is too little for modern OSes which usually starts working decently over 512 MB.
Virtual memory helps, but the PS3 will use 2'5 inch hard drives, which are quite slow.

My sugestion is that Sony could make a limited edition PS3 with bigger memory for developing, like 512 or 1 GB. After all, if they agreed to open Cell to the industry, why not help with technology's adoption selling cheap development kits?

It would be nice if IBM could back this idea, and convince Sony to make it a reality, don't you think?