Linux : PS3's downfall?

[Shifty Geezer]

Could be the reverse - the Homebrew situation showed them there's a demand, and more importantly, there's a supply - talented coders willing to create content for free.

The chances of Cell development on PS3 are surely guarenteed given recent Sony comments that they'd allow that. Plus to further the Cell processor they need coders to write for it, otherwise no-one's going to bother with it and their wonderful Cell universe Matrix Huminaty Guzzling Computer vision won't come true.

 

[Arwin]

The chances of Cell development on PS3 are surely guarenteed given recent Sony comments that they'd allow that. Plus to further the Cell processor they need coders to write for it, otherwise no-one's going to bother with it and their wonderful Cell universe Matrix Huminaty Guzzling Computer vision won't come true.

I was thinking of how they billed the PS2 as a PC last time so that they could get a fiscal discount in the EU. They could be doing the same thing right now, but I do have hopes that it'll be different this time, for among others the reason you just gave.

Besides, good chance that the EU wouldn't fall for that trick again this time, so maybe they will indeed put Linux on there by default, to make sure.

Still, it's too good to be true for me, so until I've actually seen it happen and get confirmation it's useable, I'll keep my hopes low. It's just a matter of self-preservation, really.

 

[Magnum PI]

for what we know

x86 darwin kernel sources are not released

we have no solid information concerning their release. no date.

there is some speculation that apple may release x86 darwin kernel sources sometime in the future.. but it is only speculation !

As for MacosX, it's has ever been closed source..

 

[GregLee]

The chances of Cell development on PS3 are surely guarenteed given recent Sony comments that they'd allow that.

Did they really say they'd allow Cell development? If Linux runs in an SPE as an application under the Sony OS, it wouldn't running the Cell. Developing under Linux wouldn't imply Cell development.

 

[darkblu]

Could be the reverse - the Homebrew situation showed them there's a demand, and more importantly, there's a supply - talented coders willing to create content for free.

sorry, call me a sceptic, but:

* sony did not need to 'wait and see' there'd be supply of homebrew for their platform - it could've been clearly anticipated, but sony did not provide _elementary_ means to allow for that, on the contrary, all that homebew came _depsite_ sony's efforts to stop it all. why? because:

* before considering the absolute value of homebew for sont we should try to understand its relative value, ie. what value system sony have in this market. now, there's the entertaiment industry content and there's the homebrew enthusiast content. each and every time the latter endangers the former in any way sony has no second thoughts cutting the offender. case at hand the psp - homebrew there was supressed not because sony did not see its potential, it was supressed out of fear it could inpact negatively their bread'n'butter content coming from the movie and game houses (read: equating homebrew to piracy)

so again, the simple question at hand with ps3 and homebrew is: will sony find a way to have both on the same platform. keep in mind one of those is their golden goose, the other is something commonly considered a double-edged sword by the suits.

Similarly, they need something to rival Xbox Live Arcade, and creating content for the "Playstation Distribution Network" using the official SDK wouldn't work, too expensive. This would be a good solution. And from the looks of it, the PDN is also for PSP stuff, as you can register yourself on one of Sony's official sites if you want to provide content.

could you provide a link, please?

 

[GregLee]

* before considering the absolute value of homebew for sont we should try to understand its relative value, ie. what value system sony have in this market. now, there's the entertaiment industry content and there's the homebrew enthusiast content. each and every time the latter endangers the former in any way sony has no second thoughts cutting the offender.

I am also not sanguine about Sony's opening up the PS3 system enough to count. Referring to open software as "homebrew enthusiast content" is unduly dismissive, however. Is the IBM Cell compiler, e.g., "homebrew"? If Sony are trying to estimate what value open development on the PS3 might have for them, I hope their thoughts go beyond hobbyists puttering around on weekends.

 

[patsu]

Did they really say they'd allow Cell development? If Linux runs in an SPE as an application under the Sony OS, it wouldn't running the Cell. Developing under Linux wouldn't imply Cell development.

I believe they mentioned it in a Japanese interview. The economics of PS3 Linux is different from PS2's. In the PS3 case, they have a vested interest to popularize adoption of Cell. If you check out ps2dev.org, you can already find a tool chain to program Cell under Linux. gcc seem to be missing SPE-SPE communication code generation, but a later version is supposed to enable it. I'm not sure how current my information is (may be it's been done, I just don't know).

However I believe for security and business reasons, the Linux side will be strictly partitioned from the game side. So all our talks about using Linux to popularize Playstation Network will most likely not come true. i.e., If something popular pops up on the Linux side, someone will still need to go through the standard publishing process to get it made on the game network side.

 

[Panajev2001a]

sorry, call me a sceptic, but:

* sony did not need to 'wait and see' there'd be supply of homebrew for their platform - it could've been clearly anticipated, but sony did not provide _elementary_ means to allow for that, on the contrary, all that homebew came _depsite_ sony's efforts to stop it all. why? because:

* before considering the absolute value of homebew for sont we should try to understand its relative value, ie. what value system sony have in this market. now, there's the entertaiment industry content and there's the homebrew enthusiast content. each and every time the latter endangers the former in any way sony has no second thoughts cutting the offender. case at hand the psp - homebrew there was supressed not because sony did not see its potential, it was supressed out of fear it could inpact negatively their bread'n'butter content coming from the movie and game houses (read: equating homebrew to piracy)

so again, the simple question at hand with ps3 and homebrew is: will sony find a way to have both on the same platform. keep in mind one of those is their golden goose, the other is something commonly considered a double-edged sword by the suits.

PS2Linux worked out well and security on PLAYSTATION 3 will be miles ahead of what they were able to put up with PSP on both hardware and software levels.

The Hypervisor allows even concurrent execution and separation of mltiple OS's including one RTOS (PS3OS) and one general OS (Linux). I am fairly confident that Sony will not distribute any libraries/signed code that will allow to run the program you developed right on the PS3OS: this is something that might be like PS2Linux programs cannot run on PS2's RTE directly.

I think Sony had NO insterest in evangelizing PSP's hardware to the masses and was not even too confident on its security: still, since FW 2.01 kernel mode access has been completely shut-off.

Sony IMHO has quite a bit of incentive in getting as many people familiar with the CELL architecture as possible and has worked A LOT of years to make sure PLAYSTATION 3's security system is robust and that Linux and PS3OS are solid and separate enough from each other to avoid bricking your PS3 from the PS2Linux side.

They will certainly block a lot of hardware registers (Special and Control registers inside the CBE chip and RSX) access and likely only give you Cg and a general GeForce 7 programming guide for RSX access and NO mounting of BD-Video, DVD-Video or Cd-Audio while in Linux-mode (no access to the I/O CPU). Forget about accessing the locked-OS SPU (which will probably run in isolated mode (nothing can read or write into it, even the RTOS can only "reboot" it, stop it and re-start it as if it just booted-up) or other hardware features though.

 

[patsu]

Realistically, can PS3 really run the PS3OS and a Linux OS concurrently ? Will it be usable under this scenario ? If PS3 can run both concurrently, then I'm more than sold .
But I really doubt it. :|

 

[darkblu]

i'd love to be proven wrong, Pana, but almost everything you said about the ps3 can be said about the psp. and look where it is now. anyway, we'll most definitely see. again, i'd love to be wrong on this particular account.

 

[Arwin]

could you provide a link, please?

http://us.playstation.com/beyond/welcome.html

@Patsu: reading through the initial bits of the full Programmers Guide (which I put on my PSP and am reading with Bookr ), it seems one of the things the Cell has been designed for - as mentioned also above by panajev.

Link to 10mb PDF programmer's guide (great that they worked with IBM on this. )

http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/9F820A5FFA3ECE8C8725716A0062585F

And this also is a good starting place (you can find most docs on both sites):

http://cell.scei.co.jp/

 

[darkblu]

http://us.playstation.com/beyond/welcome.html

Arwin, that seems to be somehting in the style of MS' live arcade initiative, and implies nothing about opening of any platform, evenless so the psp. suggesting that it would allow indie devs' access to ps3 hw _w/o_ obtaining official dev status is like saying live arcade opens the 360 for homebrew.

 

[patsu]

@Patsu: reading through the initial bits of the full Programmers Guide (which I put on my PSP and am reading with Bookr ), it seems one of the things the Cell has been designed for - as mentioned also above by panajev.

Link to 10mb PDF programmer's guide (great that they worked with IBM on this. )

http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/9F820A5FFA3ECE8C8725716A0062585F

And this also is a good starting place (you can find most docs on both sites):

http://cell.scei.co.jp/

Arwin, I know the Cell is capable of partitioning itself to run multiple OSes via the hypervisor. I'm questioning its effectiveness say, when running Heavenly Sword (using all available SPEs) in PS3OS and a Linux Desktop in the other. My guess is only one of the environments is active at any one time. Even when running Linux, the hypervisor is there to ensure that the partitioning works (i.e., Linux cannot cross over to the PS3OS world).

If we really want to push it, I can believe PS3 *at best* running an embedded Linux with a tight web interface (like your Linksys/D-Link/Netgear home router), and an "average" game in PS3OS concurrently. That's just my guess. No data point

 

[Panajev2001a]

i'd love to be proven wrong, Pana, but almost everything you said about the ps3 can be said about the psp. and look where it is now.

darkblu, I feel like you missed some of my post where I thought to have mentioned how basically none of what I said about the PLAYSTATION 3 can be said about the PSP, starting from my all time favourite "WE DO NOT WANT PEOPLE WRITING CODE TO RUN ON PSP! FORGET ABOUT HARDWARE DOCS!!!!" compared to "WE WILL HAVE LINUX AND WE WILL GIVE YOU A TOOLCHAIN FOR PLAYSTATION 3 (they even went on record with this)! WELL, HERE ARE TONS OF DOCS FOR CELL([for the CBE chip which is the one used in PLAYSTATION 3) AS WELL AS AN SDK FOR LINUX!"

PSP was NEVER intended to be even an inch opened to people writing code for it without an expensive official developer license and the official SDK... FECK, it took AGES for the PATCH to the GNU toolchain that allowed VFPU instructions inside inline ASM.

PlayStation 1 NetYaroze, PlayStation 2 Linux, PLAYSTATION 3 Linux... I think that SCE is moving well on this front .

 

[Arwin]

Arwin, I know the Cell is capable of partitioning itself to run multiple OSes via the hypervisor. I'm questioning its effectiveness say, when running Heavenly Sword (using all available SPEs) in PS3OS and a Linux Desktop in the other.

I never said it would work like that.

I assume(d) PS3 Linux potentially being started from the XMB, then run like a game, making the XMB unavailable until you press 'home' / shut-down Linux. The PS3OS would still be in memory, but shielded from Linux, so you can't do anything weird like learn it how to start isos through TSRs and such. But you also can't run a regular game while you are running PS3 Linux.

That's just a guess though. Right now I'm still in wait-and-see mode, I'll believe PS3 Linux when I see it on a retail machine.

 

[rabidrabbit]

I hope the PS3 Linux isn't just one of those running from a CD or DVD ROM.
That would limit it's use a lot, right?
I've never tried one of those "Run from CD" Linuxes, but I think they're more just kind of demos.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why would it be when you've got an HDD and Sony said 'Linux is preinstalled on the HDD'?

 

[ChryZ]

I've never tried one of those "Run from CD" Linuxes, but I think they're more just kind of demos.

Give it a try, a good LIVE CD is much more than just a "demo".

 

[darkblu]

PSP was NEVER intended to be even an inch opened to people writing code for it without an expensive official developer license and the official SDK... FECK, it took AGES for the PATCH to the GNU toolchain that allowed VFPU instructions inside inline ASM.

PlayStation 1 NetYaroze, PlayStation 2 Linux, PLAYSTATION 3 Linux... I think that SCE is moving well on this front .

ok, Pana, one simple question: why according to you the psp was/is such a no-go territory, but the ps3 would be an open platfrom from the get go?

[ed: i'm asking about the reasons behind that, not the factual or expected state of affairs]

 

[Urian]

ok, Pana, one simple question: why according to you the psp was/is such a no-go territory, but the ps3 would be an open platfrom from the get go?

Perhaps because we know that PS3 Linux is going to exist since the first day and we don´t have any news about a PSP homebrew developmet kit?

If my memory doesn´t fail to me PS2 Linux was one of the first things announced for the console back in 1999.