[osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Ken Mays Earthlink, Inc. Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
On 11/16/06, ken mays [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Hi Ken, (a) that's insane, and (b) yup, why the hell not! If the linux community can do it, so can we. I'm not volunteering though - I'm not into gaming (SimCity is more my style :) cheers, James C. McPherson -- Solaris kernel software engineer, system admin and troubleshooter http://www.jmcp.homeunix.com/blog Find me on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamescmcpherson ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
If the Linux sources can be useful in any way we have them here along with the Gentoo overlay: http://www.powerdeveloper.org/playstation.php RB On Nov 15, 2006, at 8:09 AM, ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Ken Mays Earthlink, Inc. __ __ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
That was fast! :) +1 Venky. On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 06:09:24AM -0800, ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Ken Mays Earthlink, Inc. Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
Ken, you're always out there on that bleeding edge. Gotta love ya man. :-) I have two things to say .. see below : OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Whats the processor ? and what the heck is this crud below ? Did the OpenSolaris project pick up a new sponsor that no one saw coming ? :-\ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $310k for $999/mo. Calculate new payment! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? Are you intending to lead that project ? -- Darren J Moffat ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
That was fast! :) +1 It was. All enthusiasm aside, what is the specific processor model? Are there any changes to the instruction set ? What is the Memory Architecture? Cache levels and types ? Memory controller ? Bus is what? PCI ? Proprietary ? Serial IO ports ? How do we get a console IFF ( if and only if ) we can get past the initial boot process. Hard quetions need to be asked and anyone that has been involved in the PPC Port process knows that the enthusiasm is nice but the code is the issue. Sorry to be a kill joy. Dennis Clarke ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? Are you intending to lead that project ? I think it may just be enthusiasm run rampant. Which is perfectly cool. The cell processor has not even seen the light of day yet and I doubt that there is a pile of documentation available on it in any case. Yes it looks very fast and it is a very good thing that someone wakes up in the morning and looks at it and says we have to get OpenSolaris ported to that puppy!. Great enthusiasm. Just think what the other extreme could be eh ? -- Dennis Clarke ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
YDL has no more than what we posted the links for on this list... We have already sent an email off to Sony. We will keep you posted on the feedback. OKay, seems spooky that this cell processor is a PowerPC chip and runs at 4GHz. I think that it *has* to be something more. In any case .. if its a PPC then it falls under the PPC Port project as an also to be looked at type of thing. Dennis ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 10:25:08AM -0500, Dennis Clarke wrote: YDL has no more than what we posted the links for on this list... We have already sent an email off to Sony. We will keep you posted on the feedback. OKay, seems spooky that this cell processor is a PowerPC chip and runs at 4GHz. I think that it *has* to be something more. In any case .. if its a PPC then it falls under the PPC Port project as an also to be looked at type of thing. Well, the Cell processor does have a PPC core, i think it might be slightly down-featured with regard to the PPC970, not sure though. But the interesting part of it are the 8 Cell units (SPEs), but this can be handled as an add-on unit, just like altivec too, i guess. Friendly, Sven Luther ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
it is well known that Cell and XBox CPU are all powerpc ISA. Cell is gaining popularity in not only the gaming computing, but in others, such as the coming road-runner, a hybrid opteron-cell supercomputer; terra soft is building the first cell-based supercomputer, IBM is selling cell blade and workstation and mercury already has cell board about one year ago. also tons of documents available from IBM web, including both SDK and full-system cell simulator. it is suprising that here are left far behind what happens outside of solaris. it is not good sign. OS research is mostly driven by hardware architecture, Cell seems represents the trends of future microprocessor (CPU+GPU on a chip) architecutre, also see what AMD is doing in fusion and Torrenza. before a powerpc solaris port is available, it does not make sense doing cell port at all, which will start powerpc port anyway. Noah On 11/15/06, Dennis Clarke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? Are you intending to lead that project ? I think it may just be enthusiasm run rampant. Which is perfectly cool. The cell processor has not even seen the light of day yet and I doubt that there is a pile of documentation available on it in any case. Yes it looks very fast and it is a very good thing that someone wakes up in the morning and looks at it and says we have to get OpenSolaris ported to that puppy!. Great enthusiasm. Just think what the other extreme could be eh ? -- Dennis Clarke ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
OKay, seems spooky that this cell processor is a PowerPC chip and runs at 4GHz. I think that it *has* to be something more. It's a PowerPC + 8 Additional Processing Units (specifically for FPU as needed for games) and 2 memory controllers. In any case .. if its a PPC then it falls under the PPC Port project as an also to be looked at type of thing. I would think so Does it have openfirmware? Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
Dennis Clarke wrote: and what the heck is this crud below ? Did the OpenSolaris project pick up a new sponsor that no one saw coming ? :-\ Sponsored Link Look at his from address - they're sponsoring his free e-mail account from yahoo. -- -Alan Coopersmith- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
Dennis Clarke wrote: and what the heck is this crud below ? Did the OpenSolaris project pick up a new sponsor that no one saw coming ? :-\ Sponsored Link Look at his from address - they're sponsoring his free e-mail account from yahoo. I figured as much. I was merely hoping that such things could be kept out of the OpenSolaris project. before too long we will see embedded images in such emails as sponsored advertising foo. dc ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
All the use graphics cards as vector daughter boards (see Nvidia's latest announcements for the nv8800 as well) methods are very interesting for HPC, and in that aspect highly-parallel vector units (such as Cell, such as any multi-pipeline floating-point vector shader graphics card) create a revival of the floating point coprocessor. It's the HPC hype of the day. I'll believe it once such a box enters the top500. Xen on the PS3 would be nice; run Solaris and the PS3 OS at the same time :-) Joking aside, I am a bit warry of the graphics cards as vector processors; these are generally low precisions units and there was little incentive to make sure all the computations were absolutely correct; graphics doesn't really care *that* much. Certainly those errors would not attract attention nor would they propagate. The code running on those GPUs was always tightly controlled; so bugs in the hardware were readily worked around; will compilers which know how to avoid such errors be available for those situations? (This doesn't apply fully to Cell which has general purpose units rather than the embedded GPUs.) So it could all end in tears or Cell has it competition cut out from nVidia and AMD. But if the GPU moves to the CPU, will that not just mean we now do graphics in the CPU again because we now have the memory bandwidth we couldn't have before? Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [osol-discuss] OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3
Frank, thanks for your comments ... On 11/15/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Noah yan wrote: it is well known that Cell and XBox CPU are all powerpc ISA. Cell is gaining popularity in not only the gaming computing, but in others, such as the coming road-runner, a hybrid opteron-cell supercomputer; terra soft is building the first cell-based supercomputer, IBM is selling cell blade and workstation and mercury already has cell board about one year ago. also tons of documents available from IBM web, including both SDK and full-system cell simulator. We've had a check this out thread on Cell, I actually think it was on opensolaris-discuss, about at the time when IBM released the first specs for Cell. More than a year ago ... But then, all the hype about Cell forgets one important thing: From the point of view of the operating system kernel, it's just a single-core PPC. The distinguishing feature of Cell, the vector unit, doesn't help an OS core at all (though you could speculate using it for such mundane tasks as block copy/clear or maybe even something elaborate as data compression and encryption). Within Sun Marketing terms, you might call the Cell and the Niagara both chips for throughput computing, but while Niagara focuses on integer parallelism Cell goes for FPU parallelism/vectorization. Complementary approaches, and a hybrid Niagara/Cell sounds technically fascinating; but as far as OS porting and running generic applications on it goes, the Cell is just a plain old PPC CPU. Its vector capabilities would benefit generic applications / OS kernels only in very few areas. that creates challenge to os (and compiler): how to make full power of this special hardware for the application instead of just considering it a plain PPC CPU (for cell, CPU+GPU multicore, and hybrid one). I believe there must some interesting work here in both the comiler and the os. The compiler knows the applications, but not the hardware; the os knows the hardware, but not the apps. the compiler could give the os more hints on how to schedule the app thread on hardware than just a a flat instruction sequence. just some immature thoughts and it is way out of the scope of this thread. Noah it is suprising that here are left far behind what happens outside of solaris. it is not good sign. OS research is mostly driven by hardware architecture, Cell seems represents the trends of future microprocessor (CPU+GPU on a chip) architecutre, also see what AMD is doing in fusion and Torrenza. All the use graphics cards as vector daughter boards (see Nvidia's latest announcements for the nv8800 as well) methods are very interesting for HPC, and in that aspect highly-parallel vector units (such as Cell, such as any multi-pipeline floating-point vector shader graphics card) create a revival of the floating point coprocessor. It's the HPC hype of the day. I'll believe it once such a box enters the top500. None of that reduces the coolness factor, though. Yes, I'd like a PS3 running Solaris, it'd be really cool - not its temperature, though :) FrankH. before a powerpc solaris port is available, it does not make sense doing cell port at all, which will start powerpc port anyway. Noah On 11/15/06, Dennis Clarke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ken mays wrote: OpenSolaris for Sony Playstation 3 This makes for an interesting OpenSolaris project for several reasons: 1. Stable hardware platform 2. Simplied device driver support 3. Modern features (Blu-Ray, Cell processor, Nvidia GPU, HDMI/HDTV, Bluetooth, 20GB HD, Networking) 4. Global distribution 5. Very Large developer community 6. Large financial backing An OpenSolaris project built around Sony Playstation 3 allows use of the advanced sound and powerful graphics capabilties - and well as a portable multi-purpose platform. Something to think about, Is this actually a proposal to port to the PS3 hardware ? Are you intending to lead that project ? I think it may just be enthusiasm run rampant. Which is perfectly cool. The cell processor has not even seen the light of day yet and I doubt that there is a pile of documentation available on it in any case. Yes it looks very fast and it is a very good thing that someone wakes up in the morning and looks at it and says we have to get OpenSolaris ported to that puppy!. Great enthusiasm. Just think what the other extreme could be eh ? -- Dennis Clarke ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org -- If anything's worth doing, do it with all your heart. The Buddha Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. Confucius Whatever you do, do it with all your heart.
