PS3 Homebrew Developments ?

Shifty Geezer

Shifty Geezer

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So...what's happening with PS3 homebrew? People must have been tinkering with Cell development. Are there any simple SPE demos, fractal generators or the like, out there yet?
 
I think we're probably still too close to the launch for the 'movement' to take off en force, but wanted to point this article out for anyone interested in being a part of said movement:

http://www.cellperformance.com/articles/2006/11/crosscompiling_for_ps3_linux.html

In it Acton outlines the steps to setting up a personal Cell development environment, as well as providing a guide to making a first 'Hello World' executable that utilizes the SPEs to run.
 
Yap... but I'm still at the second last level in Resistance. :oops:

In the mean time, waiting for my YDL v5.0 to come through in BT (I heard there is a newer 12-8-2006 iso image too, so some update is in order). I'll be researching mostly non-games though, like:

* Flash compatiblity in PS3 (The GameOS one, Macromedia's Flash 7 for Linux Mozilla and also the open source one from osflash.org). Have some personal non-games to port over.

* I am also curious about the SPE virtual file system initially (http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-cell/). May try to hook up SPE access to the Internet (via apache or some MP libraries) so you guys can try it too by submitting remote jobs.

I have left my PS3 running non-stop (in XMB or in Resistance) since about a week ago. It just hums along softly and is cooler than my P4 laptop. That gives me great confidence in using it in my home network somehow ;)


EDIT: Is anyone porting LUA Interpreter for PS3 ?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
xbdestroya said:
I think we're probably still too close to the launch for the 'movement' to take off en force.
Click to expand...
Oh, for sure. But now that people have a chance to write for SPE's, someone somewhere must be doing so! I'd have thought a Mandlebrot would be an ideal test-case that someone would try very early on. Is there anywhere other than Cellperformance to watch for PS3 homebrew?
 
Academically, I find open console development on the new systems to be very fascinating. Granted, the resources of these consoles are limited when compared to larger parallel systems, but it would have been very nice to have a PS3 or X360 for my Parallel Systems course a couple of semesters ago. Multiplying matrices and solving linear systems in parallel doesn't sound like much fun when compared to 3D graphics, but it can be very educational and one can learn a whole lot about how parallel systems work. I wouldn't be surprised if universities started using these consoles in courses that deal with parallel programming and computer architecture. Especially considering the price difference between a few consoles and a rack of MP systems. How 'bout a lab full of PS3s? :D
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Oh, for sure. But now that people have a chance to write for SPE's, someone somewhere must be doing so! I'd have thought a Mandlebrot would be an ideal test-case that someone would try very early on. Is there anywhere other than Cellperformance to watch for PS3 homebrew?
Click to expand...

I usually check out forum.qj.net and forum.ps2dev.net for development info on PSP (and PS3).

Besides IBM, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center also has a resource site for Cell development on Linux.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Oh, for sure. But now that people have a chance to write for SPE's, someone somewhere must be doing so! I'd have thought a Mandlebrot would be an ideal test-case that someone would try very early on. Is there anywhere other than Cellperformance to watch for PS3 homebrew?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been wondering about the lack of PS3 homebrew stuff too. I think it has been very quiet, surely there must be some enthusiasts that are working on atleast the basic "hello world" stuff for SPEs etc. (a fast mandelbrot zoomer would be cool!)
 
Sdw said:
...surely there must be some enthusiasts that are working on atleast the basic "hello world" stuff for SPEs etc...
Click to expand...

Ok the thread's not too long here Sdw... the 'Hello World' stuff is linked to in the second post here. :)
 
xbdestroya said:
Ok the thread's not too long here Sdw... the 'Hello World' stuff is linked to in the second post here. :)
Click to expand...

Haha, OK - that indeed was a literal implementation of "Hello world" for SPEs. I was thinking more stuff like the Mandelbrots Shifty Geezer suggested, that is a "Hello world" that actually calculates something on the SPEs and outputs something nice :)
 
A hello world is not supposed to calculate something nice, quite contrary indeed.

It does exactly what it is supposed to - using the SPE to print "hello world".
 
Planet said:
A hello world is not supposed to calculate something nice, quite contrary indeed.

It does exactly what it is supposed to - using the SPE to print "hello world".
Click to expand...

*sigh* I was using the term "Hello world" more in the spirit of getting something up and running (that is something that is not a full-fledged application), not the literal "A program that prints hello world" sense.
 
patsu said:
EDIT: Is anyone porting LUA Interpreter for PS3 ?
Click to expand...

I've run compiled and run the Lua interpreter on all of the (non-handheld) last-gen and next-gen consoles without changing a single line of code in the distributed source. Lua has the highest "Awesome*Portable" score of any code I've ever used. Just compile it. It'll run.
 
corysama said:
I've run compiled and run the Lua interpreter on all of the (non-handheld) last-gen and next-gen consoles without changing a single line of code in the distributed source. Lua has the highest "Awesome*Portable" score of any code I've ever used. Just compile it. It'll run.
Click to expand...

Now a Lua interpreter that can fully run on a single SPU would be more impressive!

I believe the interpretor itself can fit within 100kb and should fit in the LS easily and have room left over for code and data.

Compile that!
 
Sdw said:
*sigh* I was using the term "Hello world" more in the spirit of getting something up and running (that is something that is not a full-fledged application), not the literal "A program that prints hello world" sense.
Click to expand...

That is like saying "i hope somebody would successfully ping that new server we bought" while you really thought more of an IRC server running on it for a quick chat. Basics are basics and now follows the hard part of someone really doing something usefull with it. BTW: I agree mandelbrot could be a nice tech demo... :)
 
inefficient said:
Now a Lua interpreter that can fully run on a single SPU would be more impressive!

I believe the interpretor itself can fit within 100kb and should fit in the LS easily and have room left over for code and data.

Compile that!
Click to expand...

Does the SPE have all the necessary instructions for executing a Lua interpreter? I'm pretty sure it needs to directly read/write single bytes, is that possible on a SPE?
 
assen said:
Does the SPE have all the necessary instructions for executing a Lua interpreter? I'm pretty sure it needs to directly read/write single bytes, is that possible on a SPE?
Click to expand...

Not in hardware, but the compiler should convert byte accesses to read-mask-store sequences.

Isn't fast though :)

Cheers
 
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