[MPlayer-dev-eng] [FFmpeg-devel] Optimizations for Cell Broadband Engine

[Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri]

On 5/7/07, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> Hi
>
> On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 02:30:30PM +0200, Guillaume Poirier wrote:
> > Hello folks,
> >
> > There's been several people on this mailing list wondering if there
> > were any plans to write optimizations for Cell Broadband Engine, with
> > not much luck since now.
> > A few days ago, I've been contacted by a person working at IBM who's
> > offering to give one PS3 (maybe more than one, I don't know) to
> > someone who would be interested to write such optimizations.
> > In case any of you is interested, please contact me, and I'll forward
> > your application to this person.
>
> can the ps3 be connected to the net?

Yes, both ethernet and Wifi

> can sshd be installed on it?

Sure, it allows you to install Linux without any trouble. Gentoo,
Fedora and Ubuntu are known to run fine. It's a powerpc with 2
execution threads, that's why it's easy.

Problem is to use its SPUs, AFAIR they're exported to userspace as a
filesystem where you have dirs mapping to SPU and internally the
mailbox, register, ... so requires another offloading logic.


> if yes to both, then i would suggest that these be done and everyone
> who is interrested from ffmpeg/x264/xine/mplayer/xvid/vlc/...
> could get an account to port, test and benchmark their code on it
>
> that of course doesnt awnser who would physically get the ps3 or admin
> it

Given IBM's size and interest on cell being widely used, I do think
that they can ship one or more PS3 to each interested developer, given
that it's a well known and committed developer. If you or any other
core hacker is interested, just let them know.

-- 
Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri
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