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

[Jason]

Newell Jensen wrote:
> As I am new to all this please correct me if I am wrong as I am trying 
> to get a better understanding of everything.  I am assuming that even 
> though you are able run linux on the PS3 that you will not be able to 
> use gnuradio as it stands because of the different processor 
> architechture, right?  That is, the code in gnuradio wouldn't take 
> advantage of the 7 SPEs etc.?  With reading over what I have, it seems 
> like using the Cell BE would be a great thing and the future looks 
> bright for this.  Thanks

Yes and no. From casual observation (I don't have a ppc platform 
currently), all of gnuradio's dependencies already run on most linux ppc 
and ppc64 distributions.  So getting it up and running shouldn't be too 
difficult.

The fun part will be modding GnuRadio and its dependencies to take 
advantage of the SPEs.  So, even though there is a libfft (for example) 
running on ppc/ppc64, it doesn't take advantage of the SPEs.  To do so 
is a bit more involved than just swapping out some math 
instructions/functions.  It involves, from preliminary review, wrapping 
the chunk of code you want on the SPE in an spu_thread, shipping data in 
and out via DMA, minimizing ooo (out of order, ie branchy) code, then 
reworking the algorithm to take advantage of the SIMD (single 
instruction, multiple data) instruction set.  Once that's done, 
recompile it with IBM's modified GNU toolchain, and watch it crash.  :)

hth,

Jason.