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Developing On the PS3 Under Fedora

Posted by Soulskill on from the ignore-the-toy-and-play-with-the-box dept.

An anonymous reader writes to point out the first in a series of articles from a while back about using the Playstation 3 as a development environment under Fedora. Here are the second and third parts of the series. Quoting: "Early on, it was a bit of a challenge to get Linux natively installed on the PS3. Time has passed, and a great deal has changed. Fedora 7 installs on the PS3 out of the box, with the most challenging installation steps eliminated. This article introduces the basic configuration knobs and widgets specific to the PS3 running Linux, shows you how to use them effectively, and suggests the kind of trickery that gets improved performance."

27 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. How oddly timely by dreamchaser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just finally bought a PS3 about a week ago and was getting ready to install Linux on it. I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that. I think I found my project for the weekend.

    1. Re:How oddly timely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You should watch this and save yourself some time. There is no real point in doing it except to do it, in which case you might as well just watch somebody else.

    2. Re:How oddly timely by dreamchaser · · Score: 2, Informative

      Oh I've already seen the (more than one) videos of Linux on the PS3. I want to play around with some Cell coding; that's the only reason TO do it. The PS3 has a web browser already so installing Linux to just a somewhat functional web appliance is probably a waste of time.

    3. Re:How oddly timely by hazee · · Score: 5, Informative

      I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.

      Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux. I mean, if they want to prevent you booting disks that haven't been officially signed, then that's fair enough (just about), but what does limiting the access to the GPU achieve?

      This whole business of running Linux is basically just a tax dodge anyhow - because, if it didn't run Linux, the EU would have classified it as a game, rather than a computer, and slapped a higher import duty on it.

      The EU should have stood firm and said "if you want to claim it's a computer, then users should be able to program the facilities of the *whole* computer".

      How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?

    4. Re:How oddly timely by kripkenstein · · Score: 5, Informative

      I wish we could access the GPU but I understand why Sony doesn't want that.

      Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux.

      Well, I'm just guessing, but this is my theory.

      You can't just write games for consoles, you need to be a registered developer, and have a business relationship with the manufacturer, Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft. This has two goals, first, the manufacturer gets a cut out of your profits, second, the manufacturer gets to decide what runs on the console, so there aren't any subpar titles that give it a bad name.

      If Linux could access the GPU, we'd have lots of nifty games ported to the PS3 in no time (Sauerbraten, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, etc. etc.), and later on developers might write games specifically for the PS3/Linux, just to get around the cost of developing using the 'normal' procedure for consoles. Sony, according to this theory, wants to avoid such things, for the reasons I said before: no more guaranteed profit per game played on their consoles, and no control over what games are played on them either.

      I think it's crappy reasoning, personally.

    5. Re:How oddly timely by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      It's about control of the platform. If Linux could access the GPU, then games could be written for PS3 Linux and shipped on a DVD contain a Linux kernel and bootloader without paying Sony anything. Since they sell the hardware as a loss-leader and expect to make up the difference from developer license fees and first-party game sales this would be a problem for them.

      How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?

      Depends. If it were heavily subsidised then I might accept it. Probably not though, which is why I don't own a console.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    6. Re:How oddly timely by CronoCloud · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Firefox 3 under Linux on the PS3 is a better web browser than Netfront under GameOS.

    7. Re:How oddly timely by belgian_embedded_ · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I want to play around with some Cell coding;

      A few months ago, i was part of a project writing a demo app for PS3... We wrote some cell-code to scale webcam images. The app is written in C, the project website can be found here: http://cellproject.kjeldelaey.be/documentatie/html/annotated.html The site is in dutch, but the code is documented in english.

    8. Re:How oddly timely by CronoCloud · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The point is it adds functionality to a device that already has plenty. Even if it doesn't have 3D hardware access it's still capable of doing non-3D development. There's nothing stopping someone from using Linux on the PS3 and becoming a part of the Nethack Devteam, or writing patches to Claws-Mail or something.

      I've watched video under Linux on the PS3, it may not be good enough for 1080p but for the average non-HD video it should work fine. I've watched plenty of youtube on it. Besides, there's always GameOS for that functionality.

      And Linux on the PS3 gives it the ability to read e-mail, open a powerpoint, browse the web with better web browsers than GameOS's sucky Netfront. For people with a 1 PC household that could be a godsend.

    9. Re:How oddly timely by synthespian · · Score: 2, Funny

      Absolutely. Linux on the PS3 is for Cell programming.

      --
      Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
    10. Re:How oddly timely by CronoCloud · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have my PS3 on a computer desk with a 19inch HD LCD, so it's more like a regular PC desktop setup, keyboard tray, printer and everything.

  2. An interesting video but ... by ctid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... the article specifically states that running Linux on the PS3 is now far easier. I don't know if that is true but the article states that many of the time-consuming steps are no longer required. The PS3 is a very cheap development environment if your target platform is the CELL processor and that must be a reason for doing it if you are going to be programming one of those systems. There is no reason to assume that everyone has the same motivation for running it.

    --
    Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
    1. Re:An interesting video but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't think the PS3 is a good development environment for that.

      That's nice that you don't think it's good for that. But there are plenty of things that people could use programming on Linux on the PS3 for. They could use it to familiarize themselves with writing to the SPEs. They could use it to learn about multithreading. It's an amazing learning resource. And if you happen to work in a scientific lab environment, it's a very cheap workhorse. So just because you don't think it's good for anything doesn't make it so.

    2. Re:An interesting video but ... by Sophia+Ricci · · Score: 2, Funny

      Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room

      Aah...that explains why there is only one +5 Insightful comment.

    3. Re:An interesting video but ... by belgian_embedded_ · · Score: 3, Informative

      The cellprocessor is actually a 'normal' powerpc processor (2 threads), with 8 coprocessors (Synergistic Processor cores, 1 thread each), optimized for single precisionfloating point operations. All 9 cores can use DMA simultaneous... Since the cell is actually an 'upgraded' powerpc, all FLOSS code will run on it, of course not optimazed... That's why it's so easy to port linux to it...

    4. Re:An interesting video but ... by Junta · · Score: 4, Informative

      A two processor Xeon 3.0 ghz quad core system would have an xhpl-relevant Rpeak of about 96 Gflops. Two cell processors (of the Poer8XCelli varaint, not the ones in PS3) has an Rpeak of 200 Gigaflops. The power consumption of those are about even. So the processor achieves over twice the aggregate performance within a comparable power envelope. *THAT* is why it's interesting.

      See the #1 Top500 system. Not significantly more power usage than Intel systems, but blows the Intel ones out of the water.

      The thing about code is, a Cell system can run the same C code other platforms can. Not blazingly fast, mind you, but it isn't like you *must* retool everything. In order to get the 2x boosts in certain code loops, yes, you would have to, but a lot of that is done already.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    5. Re:An interesting video but ... by hairyfeet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thanks for the info everyone,it makes a lot more sense now. Question: has anybody hacked the graphics core so you can run code on it yet? It seems to me if you were going to link a bunch of PS3s together having all those graphics cores sitting idle when they could be processing vectors seems like a waste. According to the Wiki the GPU gets 1.8 TFLOPs which,when combined with the cell would make for some truly scary number crunching. So anybody have any luck with it? I know that Sony is scared of piracy,but surely they could release a binary blob that simply lets you run number crunching,maybe an Nvidia binary that only allows certain apps to be run through the GPU. I also see on the Wiki that it share a lot in common with the Nvidia 7800. Maybe that could be the way in? But as always this is my 02c based on curiosity,YMMV

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  3. big blue trying to hack their own cpu :) by pimpimpim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Nice to find a solution to find a cheap hack to use the Cell on an IBM website. Sometimes you really wonder if they have seen the light :)

    I wonder if these machines would make an excellent slim desktop pc to compete with eee desktop and others. But I guess reselling the ps3 with linux preinstalled will be fought by Sony.

    --
    molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
    1. Re:big blue trying to hack their own cpu :) by CronoCloud · · Score: 3, Informative

      Again, the tax myth. The tax doesn't exist, hasn't existed since before Linux on the PS2 was released. It was Yabasic that was an attempt to dodge the tax, not Linux.

      By the way, you CAN install a bigger HD in the PS3, Sony tells you how in the manual.

  4. Finally! by oodaloop · · Score: 4, Funny

    The year of the Linux game console is here!

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  5. nothingtoseeheremovealong by gzipped_tar · · Score: 5, Informative

    The 3-part article tells very little about PS3-specific hacks. Basically, the author was telling you how to strip the Fedora system so that it could run on the resource-limited hardware without being too slow. This includes stopping unecessary daemons, ditch GNOME for twm, and running the X server on another box (or getting rid of X altogether).

    This also apply to everything that Fedora can run on.

    I fail to see how this is related to ``developing on the PS3 under Fedora''. The article didn't say much about development. If by ``developing'' you mean compiling your code in Fedora running inside a PS3 (which is under a virtualized environment) may be you have some points. But this is not developing for the PS3 platform. This is developing for a virtualized Linux platform.

    --
    Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
  6. Out of date by sokkalf · · Score: 3, Informative

    The FA is almost half a year old, and focusses on Fedora 7, which is EOL. Surely much must have changed since then, with Fedora 8 and 9, and probably other distros as well.

  7. It's not quite about piracy by Moraelin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, I wish somebody would explain it to me. I presume the answer has something to do with piracy, but I don't see how that has a damn thing to do with access to the graphics chip under Linux. I mean, if they want to prevent you booting disks that haven't been officially signed, then that's fair enough (just about), but what does limiting the access to the GPU achieve?

    Well, it's not quite about piracy. It's about the fact that their whole business model is, well, sorta like the Gillette model: give the razor for almost free, make them pay through the nose for blades. Or, in Sony's case: massively subsidize the console itself, but control the games publishing and make them pay extra for the games.

    It's not just Sony that has this model, btw. HP does the same with printers and ink, to the extent that for some it's cheaper to just chuck the old printer in the bin and buy a new one (which includes ink), than to buy a new ink cartridge. It's done by telcos, who give you a phone for 1 Euro, but saddle you with a long term contract as their real revenue. Etc, etc, etc.

    So the last thing Sony wants is that someone bypasses them and publishes their own games for the PS3, say, as Linux games. And don't think as much "homebrew" (they probably couldn't care less if you make your own buggy tetris clone for it), think some big publisher getting that idea. Like, say, EA realizing that they can bypass and undercut Sony for their sports games.

    And it's easier to play the piracy card there and forbid it completely from the start, than to go to court later and claim "but they need our permission to make games for our machine!" There are already precedents that you can't outright forbid that. Starting with the famous IBM case which created the software industry in the first place. Turned out that IBM couldn't forbid you to make software for their machines. Atari tried the same stunt and lost too. In fact, nobody won that kind of a case yet, and I'm not sure Sony wants to try to be the first.

    This whole business of running Linux is basically just a tax dodge anyhow - because, if it didn't run Linux, the EU would have classified it as a game, rather than a computer, and slapped a higher import duty on it.

    AFAIK, that tax loophole was removed _years_ ago. So, nope.

    The EU should have stood firm and said "if you want to claim it's a computer, then users should be able to program the facilities of the *whole* computer".

    AFAIK, they did, back in the PS2 times. Sorta. They essentially ruled that it's a game console anyway.

    How happy would you be if you bought a new PC, only to find out that, no, you can't access the GPU, etc from your own programs?

    Well, just to play the devil's advocate, then fucking buy a computer. Of course, then you won't have Sony subsidizing half the cost of it, and they can't impose any restriction on you.

    Same as with cell phones, printers, etc. If you don't want to be bound by some long term contract, buy your own phone. If you don't want to be gouged for ink, buy a Cannon. Etc. It's that simple. If you decided to take the subsidy, then have the decency to also accept your own part of the contract too.

    It's kinda silly to essentially demand that a company subsidizes anything for you, but is forbidden to get anything in return. If they don't get anything out of that deal, why would they? No, you don't have some sacred right that someone else buys you a lollipop.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  8. No... by Junta · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If they didn't know how to develop for it, they wouldn't have gotten to #1 supercomputing slot. IBM knows how.

    Now, with this, it's a move to drum up interest in the architecture. IBM has server-class systems with enterprise support for CBE systems (QS22 being the current generation). However, drumming up general community interest in Cell benefits them in many ways.

    Businesses contemplating Cell can have developers evaluate the architecture on the cheap. They won't be able to have a high speed interconnect or decent RAM, or even respectable double-precision performance. They'll have just enough to get a feel for how coding for the platform would be. It's IBM's dream scenario, a crippled product that people buy that can serve as an evaluation platform for customers.

    IBM has come out with an amazing performance chip and managed to get it into a readily available package people can play with. Whether IBM knew it or not, the PS3 capability to run Linux is a boon to their QS server stragety.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  9. Re:In other news: PS3 is slow as hell by CronoCloud · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem is defining "comfortably". Some dev used to running Eclipse, compiling code, running Firefox, and Thunderbird under a full KDE/Gnome desktop all the time might have a different definition. I've ran X on the PS2. X on the PS3 runs better, it runs fine.

  10. Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3 by synthespian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sony has payed the Yellow Dog Linux guys to port Linux to the PS3, so it's probably more optimized for it than Fedora (even though it's based on Fedora), for instance, by using the Enlightenment window manager.

    http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/

    --
    Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
    1. Re:Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yellow Dog, in my experience, is horrendously slow on the PS3. Fedora 8 on the other hand runs like silk.

      Not to mention that Yellow Dog has long, closed development cycles. Only the Cell SDK 2.1 was supported for the longest time. While Fedora supported 3.0 soon after the new SDK's launch.

      Yellow Dog also had an issue for quite awhile which did not allow system restarts. This is particularly annoying when you are SSH'd in from across town and realize that both of your PS3's now require a 120 reset.