Paladin of the Pegasos
Posts: 1178 from 2003/3/13
From: Pinto, Madrid ...
Quote:
Jim wrote:
I contacted the President of IBM
WHAAAAT? Jim, who are you?
Quote:
Hopefully we can convince them to allow a broader use of the cell.
Now, that could be truly incredible: A bunch of geeks convincing the biggest computer company to change their mind, in exchange for nothing relevant, business wise.
Quote:
I can see why Genesi hasn't looked at this yet.
I doubt Genesi overlooks anything. Their main activity is business relations...
Quote:
IBM hasn't been very forthcoming with technical data on the cell.
Yes, they don't give away documentation and chips to computer hippies like us. But I'm sure that Sony, Toshiba and Mercury did get some attention from IBM. Size matters, simple as that.
Quote:
Plus, even if we can manage to get them to allow this kind of development,
Excuse me, but I'm completely shocked.
Quote:
its going to require a great deal of complicated design work. Unlike the 8641D from Freescale there's no ready evaluation platform
Well, you can buy a PlayStation3, it's for sure the cheapest development platform ever. Have you seen the figures for a
development board for the measly MPC5121e? By the way, I can't find the one for the MPC8610, but sure it's more expensive.
What worries me most is that nobody is talking about an important matter here. The Cell processor is extremely complicated to program for. Essentially, it's what Kutaragi (Sony) asked IBM to do for their revolutionary PlayStation 3: A supercomputer on a chip. Very suited for lots of self-contained, low data volume tasks, but dare to write an operating system for it, that really takes advantage of all the processing power.
Quote:
I probably shouldn't have even posted this,
Well, if you wanted us to drool, granted you've made it.
Quote:
but the possibilities have me excited.
I find IBM's Xenon chip (triple G5 core at 3200 Mhz!) more interesting, but it's even more restricted than Cell. We are talking about chips made specifically for certain customers, not with the aim of selling them to anyone, as manufacturers do with other discrete components. These pieces of technology carry as much business ties as technology inside.
