[Arwin]

On 29-07-2009, YDL 6.2 became available to the public. I got round to downloading it today, and it's installing right now. As I'm sure one or two other people here will try this distribution, I'm opening this thread to share some experiences.

A short list of interesting features:

- latest Cell Development kit included
- PS3VRAM installed by default

Currently I've set it up completely default, completely on the 10GB I reserved when I installed my new 320GB drive (they should try to at some point give more options then 10/310 or 310/10 ). Obviously I selected Software Development, but didn't do any other customisations.

If you want to get this going for Cell development, here's what I ended up doing and what could get you going in less than two hours!

If anyone wants to set up an environment to test Cell development with really fast using both VMWare (or something similar) and the PS3, I think this is really hard to beat:

1. download the VMWare image mentioned above, run it and log in with the user password mentioned above
2. Start the IDE ready and waiting for you on the desktop. It will immediately put three examples in your workspace ready to go. Under the TAB Cell Environments, start the Local Cell Simulator (under local Cell Simulator, a bit confusing but one has a green run button, the other doesn't)
3. download the YDL 6.2 DVD (see OP), burn it, install it on your PS3 using Install Other OS (takes about 1.5 hours), selecting the optional package software development, and at the very least enable the SSH bit in your network security/firewall (is an option during startup)
4. Back on your VMWare, test if you can ssh to your PS3 running YDL (ssh ip.address.goes.here), should prompt you to log in. Try logging in. It may tell you that the PS3 will be added to your list of remote devices - this is a good thing, the next step may not work without that.
5. In the Cell IDE (special Eclipse version) under the Tab 'Cell Environments', add a new Cell Box under Cell Box (I called it Cell Box PS3), and put in your PS3's IP, and a user and password for a user on your YDL configuration (I simply used root, didn't want to worry about rights).
5. Press OK and start it. If it can't connect the first time, don't give up immediately. It didn't work the first time for me either, but a few times later it did work.
6. Press the Run button on the project you want to run with your PS3 now (the one that shows all the Run options). On the second tab, select Target "Cell Box PS3" (or whatever you called it), choose Apply, and then Run.

That's it! Pretty cool huh? The fact that the image runs the cell SDK 3.0 and the PS3 has 3.1 installed isn't ideal, but doesn't seem to be a problem so far.

[patsu]

Originally Posted by Arwin

- PS3VRAM installed by default

I believe 6.2 has the revised PS3VRAM. It appeared earlier (6.0 or 6.1 ?).

One of the changes in 6.2 is a working WiFi manager. The one in 6.1 was bonked. If you change the WiFi setting, it will crash the WiFi manager and you can't use it anymore. ^_^

[Arwin]

Well, yes, that's true. I was listing the points more versus other Linux distributions.

[patsu]

Ah, quite right !

I didn't try installing YDL 6.2 to USB thumb drive though. Not sure how to do that just yet.

[Arwin]

Well, I'm running it now and so far it looks good. It runs well, much better than last time. The PS3VRAM really helps out, but even without that it manages to stay within 200MB pretty well with GIMP and FireFox both open. It gives a really nice vibe with a friendly user interface and obviously tailored to the PS3 - boot-game-os for instance is there in the menu, which helps. Install time was about 1.5 hours.

This definitely seems very useable. Now the next mission will be to get some development projects for Cell up and running. Looks like there's still some work to be done before that's happening, but we'll see.

[popper]

Originally Posted by Arwin

Well, I'm running it now and so far it looks good. It runs well, much better than last time. The PS3VRAM really helps out, but even without that it manages to stay within 200MB pretty well with GIMP and FireFox both open. It gives a really nice vibe with a friendly user interface and obviously tailored to the PS3 - boot-game-os for instance is there in the menu, which helps. Install time was about 1.5 hours.

This definitely seems very useable. Now the next mission will be to get some development projects for Cell up and running. Looks like there's still some work to be done before that's happening, but we'll see.

the very first development projects thing the PPC devs can do is grab the PPC x264 from git and see about
patching in the new *-crf modes and the very latest cutting edge "x264 "Macroblock Tree Ratecontrol" testing (Release candidate)" http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=148686 now commited yesturday.

ASAP after that, SOMEONE Please seriously look into adding some SPE patchs alongside the Altivec refactoring and help make cell x264 (HD) AVC Encoding werth using
and ferther developing for...

if the cell cant keep up with Darks speed and quality x86/64 patchs then whats the point of the worlds best quality HD Encoder at any price running so slow on the PS3 cell but only using the PPC CPU and some faster altivec SIMD optimised code from the few dedicated SIMD devs...

the Cell/PS3 was billed as having Exactly this super great and faster HD AVC H@L4.1 Encoding SIMD capability in the SPE's however this is clearly NOT the reality today as
noone seems interested in even trying to add any x264 SPE code there to date, the One most obvious app to potentially use SPE to its fullest for the smallest effort, even after so much time has passed, its the ONE thing it needs so badly, and could potentially then make the PS3 the best place to run it...your killer HD video app that could get masses of PS3 owners trying it out for the very first time.

*"http://sites.google.com/site/linuxencoding/x264-ffmpeg-mapping
--crf <float> (x264)
-crf <float> (FFmpeg)
Constant quality mode (also known as constant ratefactor). Bitrate corresponds approximately to that of constant quantizer, but gives better quality overall at little speed cost. The best one-pass option in x264."

BTW Arwin did you know your really old SPE project
OpenGL Low Poly Text Project - updated 6 july 2006 is coming back
"404 Page Not Found
The page you requested was not found."
is that yet another SPE project with potential thats no more..

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by popper

BTW Arwin did you know your really old SPE project
OpenGL Low Poly Text Project - updated 6 july 2006 is coming back
"404 Page Not Found
The page you requested was not found."
is that yet another SPE project with potential thats no more..

I think that was a PSP project.

I want to try Linux on PS3, but don't have time. I want to write my synthesiser.

[Arwin]

Yeah, PSP project. I think its thread dropped out of the database. I may revisit it if I get that far on Linux though - it could be interesting to see if I could create a fast 3D test renderer using the Cell somehow.

[popper]

did anyone also notice the other interesting thing , Markos's "LibFreeVec" SIMD optimised library finally made it to the YD6.2 distro.

http://www.freevec.org/

did anyone try forcing that lib yet http://www.freevec.org/content/howto...ing_ld_preload
to see if it really does improve the PPC OS speeds or the apps compiled with it?

http://www.freevec.org/content/libfreevec_ng
"....
Submitted by markos on Tue, 03/24/2009 - 23:24.
I'm in the process of rewriting libfreevec and porting it to other SIMD platforms, apart from AltiVec (which I consider dead or dying, unfortunately, thanks to the Big Powers that decided it's no longer important along with PowerPC, but that should be another topic). Anyway, the main platforms chosen are AltiVec (of course , SSE (SSE2, SSE3 and possiby SSE4), ARM NEON and Cell SPU.

The idea behind libfreevec is not restricted to AltiVec anyway. I have proven that glibc, the #1 libc used on Linux, is totally unoptimized
http://freevec.org/content/libfreeve...hmarks_updated
even for common platforms (such as x86 and x86_64), and there are performance gains that could/should materialize if someone took the effort to do it. So, I've decided to do exactly that.
..."

[Arwin]

Did you read the comments? It seems to suggest it doesn't yet work on 64bit

[popper]

which comment? i didnt see anything to think that, perhaps the easyest and quickest way is just trying it with some known working 32/64 OSS compute intensive app, video Encoder ,or mandelbrot..., whatever code on YD6.2 will tell us if it works on or with 64bit or not and compare the speeds with, and without, if it does.

if there is infact a problem, perhaps markos can clarify on his freevec or codex blog as im not sure which he reads the most today, if you ask!

im sure he would want to know if you found a problem that needs fixing on PPC PS3, and he may share his private git with you to make it better for everyone later perhaps...

[patsu]

popper... I did a quick search of H.264 projects on Cell:



* Old Papers

IBM H.264 encoding algorithm on Cell paper (2005):
https://www-01.ibm.com/chips/techlib...2570AB00594459

IEEE parallel H.264 encoding performance analysis on Cell (2007)
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/lo...hDecision=-203

IBM H.264 decoding implementation in International Multimedia Conference (2007)
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1291340



* Implementations

Dicas and IBM H.264 encoder for Cell: (Announced Oct 2008, target 2Q 2009 if active)
http://www.geniusdv.com/news_and_tut...or-cell-be.php

FixStar and CodecSys H.264 encoder: (v1.1 released)
http://codecsys.fixstars.com/en/ce10/index_2.html
http://codecsys.fixstars.com/en/supp...10/source.html (source code)
http://recruit.fixstars.com/en/cell_pro4_en.html

Toshiba and TMPGEnc SpursEngine plugin: (released)
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/pr...4xp_spurs.html

x264 Patches on Sijam
http://blog.cell.sijam.com/cell/017x264/ (Do you know whether this is legit and has been folded into the x264 source tree ?)

Sourceforge real time H.264 encoder project: Not updated since 2007
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cell-h264/
I believe this was one of the winners in the Cell programming competition.

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by popper

which comment? i didnt see anything to think that, perhaps the easyest and quickest way is just trying it with some known working 32/64 OSS compute intensive app, video Encoder ,or mandelbrot..., whatever code on YD6.2 will tell us if it works on or with 64bit or not and compare the speeds with, and without, if it does...

The comments in the second or third link mentioned that it didn't work on PS3, and then Markos replied that it didn't work yet with 64bit ...

However, I looked into it a bit more, and in fact YDL 6.2 seems to have a working version of it compiled in by default.

[Arwin]

I'm still having trouble getting an environment up and running for Cell development. I've lost my old VMWare with the Cell emulator (broken external HDD) and I can't find it online anymore. So now I'm downloading a Fedora 10 VMWare (http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/ ) and the Cell SDK Fedora 9 isos to try and see if I can install those into that image, so that I have an image for this again. I hope that works, so that I have at least something. Then maybe I can hook up the PS3 as a remote machine.

[betan]

Arwin, why do you need vmware for cell development?

[Arwin]

You don't ... it's just much more convenient. The only time I've been able to manage to get an environment up and running and compiling and modifying examples was using a ready made VMWare image with the Cell emulator on board. It has lots of obvious advantages, like being able to much more easily debug stuff. I think it could work pretty well to be able to switch using the emulator and using the real thing remotely, and that seems to be how a lot of people work.

When I've got a working image I could give a copy to Shifty so he can start working on that synth.

[oeLangOetan]

Originally Posted by Arwin

I'm still having trouble getting an environment up and running for Cell development. I've lost my old VMWare with the Cell emulator (broken external HDD) and I can't find it online anymore. So now I'm downloading a Fedora 10 VMWare (http://www.thoughtpolice.co.uk/vmware/ ) and the Cell SDK Fedora 9 isos to try and see if I can install those into that image, so that I have an image for this again. I hope that works, so that I have at least something. Then maybe I can hook up the PS3 as a remote machine.

The SDK's are very dependant on the specific version of fedora. Last year (november) I couldn't get it to work with fedora 10.

[Arwin]

Hmm, let's hope it works now, otherwise that would royally suck - it's been enough of a time sink already.

[Arwin]

I got most of it up and running I think, but I couldn't get the IDE to install into Eclipse, it seems because the install package information that needs to be downloaded from IBM couldn't be accessed, which is really annoying (same for the IBM java version, but I don't know if that is still needed).

I did however find the original VMWare that I used before again online and just downloaded it. I can heartily recommend it, because even though it's not completely up to date (3.0 rather than 3.1) it's definitely ready to go, examples included.

User/pwd is root / inn0vate

http://www.pad.lsi.usp.br/cell/index...d=23&Itemid=59

[Arwin]

Another update ...

Awesome! I've got the Fedora 7 image with Cell IDE up and running with both a local Simulator and YDL 6.2 on my PS3. I can run the same project on both targets pretty smoothly (although of course the results come back a fair bit quicker in one case ).

If anyone wants to set up an environment to test Cell development with really fast using both VMWare (or something similar) and the PS3, I think this is really hard to beat:

1. download the VMWare image mentioned above, run it and log in with the user password mentioned above
2. Start the IDE ready and waiting for you on the desktop. It will immediately put three examples in your workspace ready to go. Under the TAB Cell Environments, start the Local Cell Simulator (under local Cell Simulator, a bit confusing but one has a green run button, the other doesn't)
3. download the YDL 6.2 DVD (see OP), burn it, install it on your PS3 using Install Other OS (takes about 1.5 hours), selecting the optional package software development, and at the very least enable the SSH bit in your network security/firewall (is an option during startup)
4. Back on your VMWare, test if you can ssh to your PS3 running YDL (ssh ip.address.goes.here), should prompt you to log in. Try logging in. It may tell you that the PS3 will be added to your list of remote devices - this is a good thing, the next step may not work without that.
5. In the Cell IDE (special Eclipse version) under the Tab 'Cell Environments', add a new Cell Box under Cell Box (I called it Cell Box PS3), and put in your PS3's IP, and a user and password for a user on your YDL configuration (I simply used root, didn't want to worry about rights).
5. Press OK and start it. If it can't connect the first time, don't give up immediately. It didn't work the first time for me either, but a few times later it did work.
6. Press the Run button on the project you want to run with your PS3 now (the one that shows all the Run options). On the second tab, select Target "Cell Box PS3" (or whatever you called it), choose Apply, and then Run.

That's it! Pretty cool huh? The fact that the image runs the cell SDK 3.0 and the PS3 has 3.1 installed doesn't seem to be a problem so far.

(If I'd known this in advance, it'd probably saved me a days work at least of mucking about, trying to get a working IDE on YDL, on my Ubuntu 9.04 install, on a new Fedora 10 image ... )

[Singulus]

Hi all,

Since I've created a virtual machine (with VirtualBox) with Fedora 9 (full version) with the IBM Cell SDK v3.1 installed and tested, the next logical step is to share this virtual machine appliance with you guys.

But...I need an advice: where is the most appropriate to upload the Fedora 9 VM appliance? The size of the appliance is ~4 GB.
* Free file hosting service: I don't have any experience uploading (large) files to such sites.
* Torrent: which tracker to choose?
* Something else?