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There's a bit of public information about PS3 game development that's trickled out over the years. A couple of game developers have released slides about how th

by bri3d 11y ago

There's a bit of public information about PS3 game development that's trickled out over the years. A couple of game developers have released slides about how they used SPU, for example in Killzone 2: http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/gdc09/slides/GDC2009-vdLeeuw-KZ2SPUsCaseStudy.pdf http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/gdc09/slides/GDC2009-vd... . I think a lot of PS3 games used middleware to leverage the SPEs rather than writing the code themselves. The PS3 SDK shipped with an SPE task scheduler called SPURS and a set of libraries called "Edge" that offloaded a lot of common tasks onto SPEs. Probably the biggest Edge component was Edge Animation / Edge Geometry, which basically re-implemented a mesh skinning / geometry pipeline on SPEs instead of the RSX: http://www.jonolick.com/uploads/7/9/2/1/7921194/gdc_edge_07_final.pdf http://www.jonolick.com/uploads/7/9/2/1/7921194/gdc_edge_07_...

angersock 11y ago
Insomniac R&D has a great handful of presentations on the crackheadedness of programming the Cell. One of the most annoying things that we ran into was that it was basically impossible to buy a system to learn Cell programming on--you either had to somehow root a PS3 (which still didn't let you get all cores), or you had to buy something from Mercury Computer Systems (I think it was?) that was super expensive. It was a niche embedded processor, and hobbled because they didn't make it easier to develop for. :(
- scott_s 11y ago
  My lab at Virginia Tech had a cluster of 24 PS3s. The PS3 rack burned like a thousand suns.
- zurn 11y ago
  This was before launch I guess? The consumer PS3 did support Linux in the early days, Sony still has a page about it: https://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html https://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html Then they decided to put a stop to it and just removed it in a software update... I heard speculation that it was about getting some preferential tax/customs treatment for it because it could pass for a "computer" then. WP article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS

by bri3d 11y ago

angersock 11y ago

Insomniac R&D has a great handful of presentations on the crackheadedness of programming the Cell. One of the most annoying things that we ran into was that it was basically impossible to buy a system to learn Cell programming on--you either had to somehow root a PS3 (which still didn't let you get all cores), or you had to buy something from Mercury Computer Systems (I think it was?) that was super expensive. It was a niche embedded processor, and hobbled because they didn't make it easier to develop for. :(

scott_s 11y ago
My lab at Virginia Tech had a cluster of 24 PS3s. The PS3 rack burned like a thousand suns.
zurn 11y ago
This was before launch I guess? The consumer PS3 did support Linux in the early days, Sony still has a page about it: https://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html https://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html Then they decided to put a stop to it and just removed it in a software update... I heard speculation that it was about getting some preferential tax/customs treatment for it because it could pass for a "computer" then. WP article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS