LINUXGAMES

Cell Programming Docs

May 24th, 2006 by Crusader

While we await more detail on Sony’s Playstation3 Linux implentation, you may be interested in perusing the documentationSony and IBM have already publicly released regarding Linux and the Cell processor, the PS3′sCPU (the Linux kernel supports Cell as of v2.6.16.1):

Ideally, Linux developers will be free to create interesting homebrewapplications and games with off-the-shelf PS3 units; what’s been made available todate seems like a good start.

3 Responses to “Cell Programming Docs”

  1. SpoonMeiser Says:

    How are Sony going to stop piracy though?

    It seems to me that the reason they are stamping out homebrew apps for the PSP, is because people have made ISO loaders to play ripped games.

    If Sony has a solution to this problem, I’d be interested to know what it is. Home brew apps/games on consoles can only be a good thing, but they’ll want to stop the same mechanisms being used for piracy.

  2. Svartalf_ Says:

    With all the things Sony’s being rumored to be planning with the PS3, I don’t know if worrying about the Cell CPU is going to be all that big a deal until someone else comes up with readily available hardware. The price points are wrong. They seem to be seriously intent on DRM of the worst kind on the games for the console. They can’t seem to get dev units into the hands of development studios. All the hallmarks of a train wreck- which is a shame, considering that Linux is the base OS for the thing…

  3. Says:

    If it encourages people to port their games to a real Linux box that’s good. This license reminds me of the most restrictive ‘opensource’ license I can think of the Creative Commons non-commercial license or the Xandros non-commercial license
    It seems they have opened the hardware specs for the Cell to a certain extent, I think. I wonder what driver support would look like on a Cell outside the PS3.
    Anyway it’s decent that they have these specs not expecting a programmer who doesn’t want to pay anything for support to be able to write something. This should show it’s logical to opensource hardware in the mass market.

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