Gitbrew Releases OtherOS++ PS3 Linux Dual Boot

An anonymous reader writes "Gitbrew has proudly released otherOS++ Linux Dual Boot v1.0b1, enabling PS3 users to install an alternative OS to their console with full access to all system hardware, including all 8 CELL cores (making the PS3 the world's most affordable supercomputer). For more information check out the installation instructions and source code."

Comments

Defamation

[Anonymous Coward]

George Hotz widely distributed information on how to install another operating system onto the PS3 to run illegal versions of PS3 games and software.

Libel much?

Re:Defamation

[David Gerard]

“We discovered a file making a clear reference to ‘Username unknown,’” the company said in a letter to the US Congress on Wednesday, “and a blank user icon which therefore was anonymous. D’you see what that means? It means George Hotz and his hacker friends are loathsome criminal masterminds! So obviously we can’t be held liable for negligence in the face of forces like these. In conclusion, give us money.”

If you want a cheap laugh....

[neokushan]

Look at the comments on the same piece of news, but from a site that's predominantly made up of PS3 fans...

http://n4g.com/news/756574/hackers-bring-back-otheros-for-ps3/com

Re:If you want a cheap laugh....

[neokushan]

Why don't you check YOUR facts?
Sony had already released the PS3 Slims WITHOUT OtherOS support when Geohot decided to take a look. Sure, he used OtherOS as the attack vector, but surely that just points out that removing OtherOS wouldn't accomplish anything as the hackers can just not update and continue exploring?

Furthermore, the actual "hack" was nontrivial - it invovled a bit of soldering and require precise timing. Because of this, it wasn't easy to pull off and worked maybe 1/3 of the time. Not only that, but it wasn't even remotely permanent and it couldn't be used for piracy or anything. In fact, interest in this hack was more or less gone by the time OtherOS was removed, if Sony had just ignored it until there was actually an issue, then it would have just went away. But then again, Maybe Sony realised how weak their security was.

Re:Benchmarks!

[mcgrew]

The PS3 suddenly became an interesting product again :-) Now lets give us some benchmarks of some scientific number crunching apps!

Not to me. Sony is at war with its customers; that's been evident since XCP. Hell, I felt dirty buying a broken Sony stereo for ten bucks, even though Sony didn't profit from my purchase.

How do you know the PS3s don't have hardware rootkits? I know of no other company that's deliberately installed malware on its products. I avoid Sony like the plague and can't understand why anyone would buy anything from them, or how it's has stayed in business, let alone how it can actually have fanbois.

Oh stop with the supercomputer bullshit

[Sycraft-fu]

Seriously, calling devices "supercomputers" reeks of either fanboyism or extreme ignorance. If a desktop device can do a given amount of calculations, that amount of calculations don't make something a supercomputer anymore.

Please remember that the first supercomputer, the Cray-1, did 250 MFLOPS. So if that is what it takes to be a supercomputer then my cellphone qualifies. Of course it doesn't anymore, these days you need to talk multiple TFLOPS (or more).

A PS3 is not a supercomputer. In fact these days, it isn't all that impressive. The best they claim is 25.6 GFLOPS per cell in theoretical performance, so 205 GFLOPS is the best you theoretically get, if there are no bandwidth constraints (which there are on a PS3) for single precision math. Ok well testing my actual Radeon 5870, I get 800 GFLOPS for single precision, 227 for double precision. That is an actual benchmark of the card running on my desktop. It also can handle a much larger problem set, having much more RAM (1GB on the card).

Heck even my i7 benches at 80 GFLOPS on a real test, without using AVX, and of course is far more flexible than the SPUs since all cores are full featured.

Not saying there is anything wrong with the Cell and indeed there may be some cases where it is the best choice. It is something of a hybrid between a pure stream processor like a GPU and a very general CPU like an i7. However trying to claim it makes the PS3 a "supercomputer" is stupid. Even if it were the most powerful chip out there, the PS3 still would be a supercomputer by virtue of the fact that if one made a large computer with a lot of Cells, it would be much faster (this has been done).

However that aside, it really isn't all that fast. Modern GPUs out do it at stream processing many times over. My 5870, which is not the latest tech and just a consumer card, was about 4 times as fast in reality as a Cell is in theory, and that is running on a desktop system doing other things (I didn't boot to a special graphics benchmark or anything).

Re:Oh stop with the supercomputer bullshit

[dvdkhlng]

The best they claim is 25.6 GFLOPS per cell in theoretical performance, so 205 GFLOPS is the best you theoretically get, if there are no bandwidth constraints (which there are on a PS3) for single precision math. Ok well testing my actual Radeon 5870, I get 800 GFLOPS for single precision, 227 for double precision. That is an actual benchmark of the card running on my desktop.

As somebody who programmed Cell CPUs for signal processing (including to, but not limited to PS3s), let me tell you that the PS3's memory bandwidth is so close to unlimited, that you usually don't have to think about it. At least as long as you move data only on the Element Interconnect Bus, between the 256KB local SRAMs of each CELL core, which is sufficient for most of what I did. It moves up to 200 giga bytes per second, maximum 16 bytes per 2 cycles in and out per core. The DMA engines that do those transfer have their own 1024bit (!) read/write port into the SRAM, so they burst 128 bytes per cycle into the SRAM, and don't have to steel many RAM cycles. The wikidedia article has more details.

In my experience, you can usually come pretty close to the 200 GFLOP/s of the Cell-CPU. When relying on C-Compiler with SIMD intrinsics, you usually manage 100 GPFOP/s for algorithms that have as many read/write opcodes as arithmetic opcodes. Smaller problems can mostly be handled on registers only (per CPU we have 128 16-byte registers!) and will run even faster.

Also note that many algorithms nowadays are not bandwidth but memory latency limited. Having the Cell's per-core DMA engines do background transfers to large local S-RAMs, mostly eliminates these latency problems and is much cleaner than relying on CPU caches guessing what parts of RAM to prefetch next. BTW these are user-space DMA engines that undergo page translation and are fully compatible to unix vm concepts. Still programming directly accesses DMA registers and doesn't need any kernel calls.

Try to do that with your GPU!

Something to do...

[fostware]

Look at it this way... at least you can use your PS3 while waiting for your PSN account to be reactivated ^_^

Re:Benchmarks!

[houstonbofh]

Sounds right. Until you think again. There was a second rootkit with the microvault thumb drive and they were another division as well. (Why do people keep forgetting this one?) Then the subpoenas of people who visited a web site, or watched a video, which was still yet another division. Sony sees the customer as the enemy. I do not want to do business with my enemy.

Summary missed the most important part of story

[moniker]

Apparently, Geoff Levand was one of the people behind this release [1]. Geoff Levand is the programmer who worked for Sony supporting OtherOS and made the ill-fated and oft-quoted promise that Sony would never ever remove OtherOS from fat PS3s. [2] Looks like Geoff just kicked his former employer in the nuts. Go Geoff!

[1] http://psgroove.com/content.php?1029-PS3-Dual-Boot-GameOS-Linux-CFW-Released
[2] http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/cbe-oss-dev/2010-February/007202.html

Re:Benchmarks!

[mcgrew]

The 360 wasn't an option because the crime cartel that created it will not get my dollar.

I don't get it. Yes, MS is a dirty company, but Sony makes MS look like Mother Theresa. Almost all of MS's victims were their competetitors, almost all Sony's victims were their customers. I avoid MS products because I simply don't like most of them.

If I'd done to Sony's computers what they did to mine, I'd be in prison (my then-teenaged daughter worked in a record store and deliberately installed the software, never dreaming that a big, reputable company would ruin her dad's PC).

One might consider that the rootkit was only possible because Microsoft's OS was insecure

MS is insecure, true, but if you can convince a user to install your program with root priveleges, you can pwn any OS. Like I said, I had autoplay shut off, but my daughter trusted Sony. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Microsoft shipped a virus on their OS install disk but you give that a pass. They pushed a patch that changed their OS to allow a single, specially crafted image on a website to root your machine to help Federal law enforcement to install spy software on PCs.

I hadn't heard of that one, would like to read about it and would appreciiate a link. Was the virus deliberate, or a stupid oversight?

Does you altruism keep you from running Windows?

It's not altruism, it's mistrust. And no, I have no Microsoft software at home (I'm forced to use their crappy software at work, though). I run kubuntu. When I bought a netbook last year, Windows was only on it long enough for me to figure out how to install Linux without a CD drive.

The last MS OS I bought was XP (right after Sony rooted me and I couldn't get win 98 drivers for my sound and video cards), and the worst thing it did to me was to replace a perfectly good network driver with one that didn't work at all. But that was incompetence rather than evil.

I got tired of chasing the dragon about the time the game companies all started treating their customers like crap, and just stopped gaming.

Someone should submit a /. story "Who's more evil, Sony or Microsoft?" I would posit that MS is incompetent and/or don't care (they don't have to with their virtual monopoly), while Sony deliberately commits evil against its paying customers time and time again.

I would imagine that Sony's console probably is a better made console than Microsoft's, but I have little experience with either (I think my nephew has both).

I don't feel I have the moral high ground; I use AT&T for internet access, and that makes me feel dirty, but Comcast is my only other choice and they're as evil and more expensive.