Make the Most of IBM’s Breakthrough Cell Processor in Any Gaming, Graphics, or Scientific Application
IBM’s Cell processor delivers truly stunning computational power: enough to satisfy even the most demanding gamers and graphics developers. That’s why Sony chose the Cell to drive its breakthrough PlayStation 3 and why Cell processors are at the heart of today’s most powerful supercomputers. But many developers have struggled to create high-performance Cell applications: the practical, coherent information they need simply hasn’t existed.
Programming the Cell Processor solves that problem once and for all. Whether you’re a game developer, graphics programmer, or engineer, Matthew Scarpino shows you how to create applications that leverage all the Cell’s extraordinary power. Scarpino covers everything from the Cell’s advanced architecture to its powerful tools and libraries, presenting realistic code examples that help you gain an increasingly deep and intuitive understanding of Cell development.
Scarpino illuminates each of the Cell’s most important technical innovations, introduces the commands needed to access its power, and walks you through the entire development process, including compiling, linking, debugging, and simulating code. He also offers start-to-finish case studies for three especially important Cell applications: games, graphics, and scientific computing. The Cell platform offers unprecedented potential, and this book will help you make the most of it.
- Mastering the Cell SDK, including the GCC-based buildchain, ppu-gdb/spu-gdb debuggers, IBM Full System Simulator, and Cell IDE
- Understanding the Cell’s central processing core, the PowerPC Processor Unit (PPU): structure, programming libraries, and AltiVec instructions
- Programming the Synergistic Processor Unit (SPU): vector processing, communication, caching, assembler coding, and more
- Leveraging SDK vector and matrix libraries, including the Large Matrix Library, BLAS Library, FFT libraries, Multiprecision Library, and Monte Carlo API
- Coding basic 2D graphics using the Linux frame buffer
- Building 3D graphics with the new Gallium OpenGL library
- Constructing 3D games with Ogre3D and packaging them using Collada digital content interchange
- Optimizing the performance of your Cell applications
- Developing on standard PCs and transferring code to Cell systems such as the PlayStation 3
Foreword xv
Preface xvii
Chapter 1: Introducing the Cell Processor 1
Part I: The Software Development Tools 13
Chapter 2: The Cell Software Development Kit (SDK) 15
Chapter 3: Building Applications for the Cell Processor 35
Chapter 4: Debugging and Simulating Applications 53
Chapter 5: The Cell SDK Integrated Development Environment 83
Part II: The PowerPC Processor Element (PPE) 97
Chapter 6: Introducing the PowerPC Processor Unit (PPU) 99
Chapter 7: The SPE Runtime Management Library (libspe) 125
Chapter 8: SIMD Programming on the PPU, Part 1: Vector Libraries and Functions 153
Chapter 9: SIMD Programming on the PPU, Part 2: Methods and Algorithms 195
Part III: The Synergistic Processor Element (SPE) 217
Chapter 10: Introducing the Synergistic Processor Unit (SPU) 219
Chapter 11: SIMD Programming on the SPU 239
Chapter 12: SPU Communication, Part 1: Direct Memory Access (DMA) 285
Chapter 13: SPU Communication, Part 2: Events, Signals, and Mailboxes 317
Chapter 14: Advanced SPU Topics: Overlays, Software Caching, and SPU Isolation 345
Chapter 15: SPU Assembly Language 367
Part IV: Mathematics and Computation 409
Chapter 16: Vectors and Matrices 411
Chapter 17: The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) 439
Chapter 18: Multiprecision Processing and Monte Carlo Methods 463
Part V: Graphics and Games 489
Chapter 19: Programming the Frame Buffer: Linux and the PlayStation 3 491
Chapter 20: OpenGL on the Cell: Gallium and Mesa 503
Chapter 21: Building Games with Ogre3D 529
Chapter 22: Packaging Graphics with COLLADA 559
Epilogue 581
Part VI: Appendices 583
Appendix A: Understanding ELF Files 585
Appendix B: Updating the PS3 Add-On Packages and Installing a New Linux Kernel 609
Appendix C: The Accelerated Library Framework (ALF) 617
Appendix D: SPU Instruction Set Reference 649
Appendix E: A Brief Introduction to Tcl 661
Index 669
