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Octopiler to Ease Use of Cell Processor

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ps3-where-are-you dept.

Sean0michael writes "Ars Technica is running a piece about The Octopiler from IBM. The Octopiler is supposed to be compiler designed to handle the Cell processor (the one inside Sony's PS3). From the article: 'Cell's greatest strength is that there's a lot of hardware on that chip. And Cell's greatest weakness is that there's a lot of hardware on that chip. So Cell has immense performance potential, but if you want to make it programable by mere mortals then you need a compiler that can ingest code written in a high-level language and produce optimized binaries that fit not just a programming model or a microarchitecture, but an entire multiprocessor system.' The article also has several links to some technical information released by IBM."

2 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. Makes you wonder by Egregius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It makes you wonder what the release-titles of the PS3 will be like, if they didn't have a decent compiler untill now. And 'the PS3 is due out in 2006.'

  2. Hello, Itanium... by general_re · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sound familiar? "All we need to make it work as advertised is a really slick compiler that doesn't actually exist yet..."

    --
    ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.