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Unleashing the Power of the Cell Broadband Engine

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the wish-my-brain-had-nine-cores dept.

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."

1 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. CBE = Failure by MOBE2001 · · Score: 1, Troll

    Mod me down if you wish but I think the CBE architecture is bound to fail. The reason is that you don't design your software model around a new processor. It should be the other way around. You first come up with a software model and then design a processor optimized for the new model. This way you are guaranteed to have a perfect fit. Otherwise, you're asking for trouble.

    The primary reason that anybody would want to devise a new software model is to address the single most pressing problem in the computer industry: unreliability. The reason that software is unreliable is that it is based on the algorithm. Switch to a non-algorithmic, signal-based, synchronous model and the problem will disappear. Unfortunately current processor architectures, including the CBE, are optimized for the algorithm. Click on the link below for details on a new software model designed to solve the reliability problem.