Cell Broadband Engine

Georgia Tech

• Cell Buzz User Guide
• hostname: cell-user.cc.gatech.edu

Assembly Programming

• Instruction cheat sheet, Insomniac Games
• SPU Instruction Set, IBM
• SPU Assembly Language Specification, Sony

Optimization

• Understanding TLB and PTE misses

Other Resources

• Cell Pointers, MIT: DMA sizes, alignment, some intrinsics
• Linking spu and ppu with symbols to provide effective address of ppu objects in spu at compile time, avoid having to use dma to get addresses of ppu objects into the spu
• SPU programming tutorial, grondklont.nl
• Programming the Cell course at MIT

Sony

• Documentation from Sony

IBM

• >Software Development Kit for Multicore Acceleration Version 3.1 Programmer’s Guide. IBM. 2008.

-Stack management

• >Programming the Cell Broadband Engine™ Architecture Examples and Best Practices
• Software Development Kit for Multicore Acceleration Version 3.0, Programmer's Guide, html version at NCSU
• Debugging SPU/PPU code with ppu-gdb
• SDK 3.1 Installation Manual
• IBM Systems and Technology Group. Cell Broadband Engine Architecture. IBM. October 11, 2007
• The Cell project at IBM
• Cell programming projects
• IBM Cell reference documentation
• Power.org CBE development resources

Training

• Smart tutorial at Embedded.com
• Nice overview slides from DOE, Ryan Kerekes
• MIT cell mini reference
• Cell Programming Guide, IBM
• Training Series targeted for IBM employees
• Power Architecture recommended reading
• Training videos from Georgia Tech

Programming

• Abraham Arevalo, Ricardo M. Matinata, Maharaja Pandian, Eitan Peri, Kurtis Ruby, Francois Thomas, Chris Almond. Programming the Cell Broadband Engine™ Architecture Examples and Best Practices. IBM Redbooks, August 2008.
• Yang Pu, Cheng Long, Rui Jianhua. Porting practices: Compute-intensive applicationsThese practices can help when you want to bring a compute-intensive application to the Cell/B.E. architecture. IBM developerWorks 19 Jun 2007.
• Installing Yellowdog Linux on PS3
• Programming high-performance applications on the Cell BE processor, Part 1: An introduction to Linux on the PLAYSTATION 3
• Programming high-performance applications on the Cell BE processor, Part 2: Program the synergistic processing elements of the Sony PLAYSTATION 3
• Programming high-performance applications on the Cell BE processor, Part 3: Meet the synergistic processing unit
• Programming high-performance applications on the Cell BE processor, Part 4: Program the SPU for performance
• Programming high-performance applications on the Cell BE processor, Part 5: Programming the SPU in C/C++
• Programming high-performance applications on the Cell/B.E. processor, Part 6: Smart buffer management with DMA transfers

XL Compiler (xlc)

• compiler flags

-qcompact: Reduce code size where possible, at the expense of execution speed. Code size is reduced by inhibiting optimizations that replicate or expand code inline.

Altivec vs. SPU Intrinsics

• vmx2spu.h, c++ file overloading for altivec->SPU conversion
• Vipin SachdevaCorresponding, Michael Kistlera, Evan Speighta, and Tzy-Hwa Kathy Tzenga. "Exploring the viability of the Cell Broadband Engine for bioinformatics applications". aIBM Future Technology Solution Design Center, IBM Systems and Technology Group, Indianapolis, IN, Austin, TX Poughkeepsie, NY, United States. 17 May 2008.

-The vmx2spu.h file in the Cell/B.E. SDK provides SPU implementations for all the Altivec intrinsics that do not have a corresponding SPU intrinsic.

Software/Development

• IBM Cell SDK Downloads
• "Linux patches, tools support Cell Processor evaluation"
• Debugging Cell Broadband Engine systems Essential tools and techniques for the Cell BE software developer
• Matrix Inverse Application
• MPI microtask for programming the Cell Broadband Engine processor
• A Programming Example: Large FFT on the Cell Broadband Engine

Hardware

• IBM BladeCenter QS20, Server implementing Cell Broadband Architecture
• Mercury Cell Accelerator board 2

Profiling

• OProfile on Power PC

Articles

• IEEE Search on Cell Processor
• External papers from the IBM web site

General/Architecture

• > (2.1) D.C. Pham, T. Aipperspach, D. Boerstler, M. Bolliger, R. Chaudhry, D. Cox, P. Harvey, P.M. Harvey, H.P. Hofstee, C. Johns, J. Kahle, A. Kameyama, J. Keaty, Y. Masubuchi, M. Pham, J. Pille, S. Posluszny, M. Riley, D.L. Stasiak, M. Suzuoki, O. Takahashi, J. Warnock, S. Weitzel, D. Wendel, K. Yazawa, "Overview of the architecture, circuit design, and physical implementation of a first-generation cell processor", Technol. Group, IBM Syst., Austin, TX, USA, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Volume: 41 , Issue: 1, pp. 179-196, Jan. 2006 (originally forwarded by Dr. Chatha)
• CODES+ISSS 2007 Tutorial summary on Cell Processor
• Kahle, J., "The Cell Processor Architecture", IBM, MICRO-38. 38th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture, 12-16 Nov. 2005
• M. Day, P. Hofstee, "Hardware and software architectures for the CELL processor", IBM Systems&Technology Group, Austin, TX, Hardware/Software Codesign and System Synthesis, CODES+ISSS, Sept. 2005
• D. Stasiak, R. Chaudhry, D. Cox, S. Posluszny, J. Warnock, S. Weitzel, D. Wendel, M. Wang, "Cell processor low-power design methodology" Syst. & Technol. Group, IBM Corp., Austin, TX, USA, Micro, IEEE, Volume: 25 , Issue: 6 pp. 71-78, Nov.-Dec. 2005
• Tom Krazit, "IBM, Sony, Toshiba Unveil Nine-Core Cell Processor", IDG News Service, February 07, 2005

-"Cell will probably consume around 30 watts of power, similar to the Emotion Engine processor in the PlayStation 2"

• (2.4) A. E. Eichenberger, K. O’Brien, K. O’Brien, P. Wu, T. Chen, Pe. H. Oden, D. A. Prener, J. C. Shepherd, B. So, Z. Sura, A. Wang, T. Zhang, P. Zhao, M. Gschwind, "Optimizing Compiler for a CELL Processor", Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques, 2005
• David Krolak, "Just like being there: Papers from the Fall Processor Forum 2005: Unleashing the Cell Broadband Engine Processor: The Element Interconnect Bus", IBM, 29 Nov 2005

High Performance Computing Application

• > (2.2) A. Buttari, P. Luszczek, J. Kurzak, J. Dongarra, G. Bosilca, "A Rough Guide to Scientific Computing On the PlayStation 3", Technical Report UT-CS-07-595, Innovative Computing Laboratory, University of Tennessee Knoxville, May 11, 2007
• "Researchers Analyze HPC Potential of Cell Processor", HPC Wire, May 2006

-S. Williams, J. Shalf, L. Oliker, S. Kamil, P. Husbands, K. Yelick, "The Potential of the Cell Processor for Scientific Computing", ACM, May 2006

• D. A. Bader, V. Agarwal, K. Madduri, "On the Design and Analysis of Irregular Algorithms on the Cell Processor: A Case Study of List Ranking", IEEE, 2007
• David A. Bader, Virat Agarwal, "BFFTC: Fastest Fourier Transform for the IBM Cell Broadband Engine", High Performance Computing – HiPC 2007, pp. 172-184, 2007
• S. Williams, J. Shalf, L. Oliker, S. Kamil, P. Husbands, K. Yelick, Scientific Computing Kernels on the Cell Processor, International Journal of Parallel Programming, 2007

Media Application

• cell-h264 project at Sourceforge
• (2.3) L. Liu, Q. Liu, A. Natsev, K. A. Ross, J. R. Smith, A. L. Varbanescu, "Digital Media Indexing on the Cell Processor", ICME, 2007
• The Cell BE Processor: A Broadband Engine for Broadcast Applications
• N. Kato, K. Takeuchi, S. Maeda, M. Shimbayashi, R. Sakai, H. Nozue, J. Amemiya, Digital Media Applications on A CELL Software Platform, Toshiba Corporation, IEEE, 2006
• (2.5) Nobuhiro KATO, Kazuaki TAKEUCHI, Seiji MAEDA, Mitsuru SHIMBAYASHI, Ryuji SAKAI, Hiroshi NOZUE and Jiro AMEMIYA, Digital Media Applications on A CELL Software Platform, International Conference on Consumer Electronics, 2006. ICCE '06. 2006 Digest of Technical Papers. 7-11 Jan. 2006 Page(s):347 - 348

-TOSHIBA Corporation, JAPAN

• (2.6) Ashish Jagmohan, Brent Paulovicks, Vadim Sheinin, Hangu Yeo, H.264 Video Encoding Algorithm on Cell Broadband Engine, Department of Multimedia Technologies, IBM TJ Watson Research
• (2.7) Lurng-Kuo Liu, Sreeni Kesavarapu, Jonathan Connell, Ashish Jagmohan, Lark-hoon Leem, Brent Paulovicks, Vadim Sheinin, Lijung Tang, Hangu Yeo Video Analysis and Compression on the STI Cell Broadband Engine Processor, IEEE, ICME 2006

Real Time Application

• S. Maeda, S. Asano, T. Shimada, K. Awazu, H. Tago, "A real-time software platform for the Cell processor", Toshiba Corp., Japan, Micro, IEEE, Volume: 25 , Issue: 5, pp. 20-29, Sept.-Oct. 2005
• Seiji Maeda, Sigehiro Asano, Tomofumi Shimada, Koichi Awazu, Haruyuki Tago, "A Real-Time Software Platform for the Cell Processor", IEEE, 2005

Other Applications

• Microarchitecture and implementation of the synergistic processor in 65-nm and 90-nm SOI

Last printed: 2.7