Re: [Chicken-users] anyone have a Playstation 3 ?

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Shawn Rutledge wrote:
> Yeah that sounds like some yummy hardware to hack on.  But Chicken
> doesn't have native threads right, so not much point in having all
> those cores unless you use multiple processes with some IPC method...
> or if it provides the impetus to work on the problems that are
> blocking us from having native threads...   I sure wish that was
> possible because everything is going multi-core.

I seriously doubt that the best way to make use of all those Cell 
processing units is with any kind of threading.  I expect there's 
probably some way to more tightly synchronize their actions, when coding 
hand assembly.  I'm not interested in the Cell as some kind of 
architecture where you just forget about what you're doing, put stuff in 
threads, and hope they perform better.  That's how the XBox 360 is 
designed; its threading model is coarse and conventional.  I'm sure it 
will be popular with developers that don't want to think much about the 
architecture.  I expect, however, that the Cell has capabilities that 
can only be realized by writing very specifically for that 
architecture.  I haven't read up on the Cell enough to know what is 
possible, but I will be doing so.

> As a console it seems to be bombing so far; they are already going for
> less than retail on ebay, 

Um, no.  They've been going for $1500 on e-bay.  That's 2.5 times their 
$600 retail, and almost 2 times their $800 manufacturing cost.  Sony was 
supposed to deliver 400k units at launch and has only done about 200k.  
Crimes have been committed by people to obtain them, including murder.

Besides, the Cell isn't going to be used in just the PS3.  That's just 
the cheap way to get ahold of one right now.

> and Christmas isn't even here yet.  With any
> luck, after Christmas they will just keep getting cheaper.

Yep, that I do hope.


Cheers,
Brandon