Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] PS3/Cell BE platform

[Robert McGwier]

Yes.  For a work project my group is purchasing two Mercury 1U Cell 
servers.  This will make ATSC and HDTV a real possibility.  These 
Mercury servers have a high bandwidth PCI express connection for getting 
data in and out of the world.    Another fellow and I will be porting 
GnuRadio to the Cell BE ont he Mercury.   It is not for consumers in 
this form.  These things are over $10,000 a piece with PPC Linux 
installed.  I cannot wait until we get the PS3's hacked to be Linux 
desktops.

Bob


Jason wrote:
> All,
>
> has anyone been looking at the Cell BE processor as a gnuradio backend 
> platform?
>
> For US$600 you get a Playstation 3 that boots linux, and has 7 128bit 
> RISC processors, each with 256k local memory, all moving at ~3.4GHz. 
> Each RISC processor is optimized for vector math / stream 
> processing... :)
>
> There is already an SDK (modified GNU toolchain) from IBM.  It seems 
> to use a standard toolchain and apps that run on a 64bit ppc, but the 
> toolchain is modified to compile special threads (different exec type) 
> for the RISC processors (called SPEs).  threads are written in C 
> against a provided library.
>
> My thought for GnuRadio was to make near realtime mod/demod of ATSC a 
> possibility.  As well as speeding up most other stream processing.
>
> The SDK and info are here [1].  The .iso seems to have everything 
> needed, and the provided code examples aren't too much different from 
> writing pthreads.  The magic is in the added instruction set.
>
> Good luck getting a hold of one before Christmas :)
>
> Jason.
>
> [1] http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/cell/
>
>
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--
AMSAT Director and VP Engineering. Member: ARRL, AMSAT-DL,
TAPR, Packrats, NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. ARRL SDR WG Chair
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.
You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los
Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly
the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there.
The only difference is that there is no cat." - Einstein