Hideki A. Ikeda (HidekiAI) [池田英紀] ["Tony" Ikeda] – BLog

I had the privileges to be chosen as one of the attendees for the IBM’s CELL BE Workshop on the 30th and 31st of October (2006).  There were approximately 12 in the workshop and 6 of us were the few/lucky early registered ”outsiders”.

I’ve signed up and attended the workshop as independent and outside from work.  My current work does not fully benefit from hands-on experiences I’ve gained on CELL BE.  But what I’ve learned at the workshop surely can indirectly benefit what I do at work on multi-threaded service applications.  I’ve taken P.T.O. to be at IBM but I did get my blessings from my superiors.  It was an opportunity I’d never miss, IBM has been a great influence to me in the past few years and ever since I’ve started reading up on CELL processor, I’ve been in envy for developers who “get to” program on it.

I remember when I was in high-school, all I could think about was 6502 (I was an Apple][+ fan) and I used to think everything in HEX.  I was so excited to code assembly language and knew all the cycles and opcodes of each and every instructions (not any more).  CELL processor makes me feel like how I was back then again.  It’s been a while since I’ve felt so excited about a processor…

I’ve been reading up on CELL documentations since the day it was announced that it would be published for public to evaluate.  But I’ve never been able to invest in time to run the simulator, so it was all theories to me more than practice.  All talk, no actions…

There’s nothing new or secret that you would gain from the workshop except for hands-on experiences.  The instructors were very knowledgeable (the head instructor was very articulate, animated, and kept me in focus to every words he spoke, he’s damn good!), in matter of fact, all the IBM’ers (from one department or another) there for the workshop shared and contributed on their knowledges.  They all impressed me so much.

We worked on Fedora core version of the Simulator.  Played with few approaches on PPU only code, move it over to SPU, SPU-to-SPU, Mailbox, DMA List, etc.  Touched somewhat on the Eclipse as well.  All in all, they have designed the workshop very well and organized.  To me, a great course is when the instructors organize the lessons so well in order that when you complete it, you felt like you’ve learned something and did not make you feel stupid.  They were so clear and detailed enough on each subjects that you did not feel puzzled or overwhelmed.  Yet, they have covered enough in practice and theories that you can feel confident to start programming on CELL without fear of unknown.

The workshop provides us no proof or certificates which I can show off to others.  But on the 2nd day, they gave us 6 outsiders souvenirs (IBM knick-knacks), 2 days full of workshop handbooks, and whole lot of awe, great impression and admirations of how IBM is well organized.  That memory to me is more valuable and last a life-time than any certifications.

P/S: see http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/faq/ps3-general.shtml

Addendum:  See other sources such as:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.20  – just search for “PS3″

http://overlays.gentoo.org/dev/lu_zero/wiki/CellTutorial - Gentoo crossdev now supports ppu and spu! (try “#crossdev -t help”, you will see PS3 support)

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