Unleashing the Power of the Playstation 3 to Boost Graphics Programming

Abstract

This tutorial is intended for programmers who are interested in boosting their graphics application using a different architectural paradigm: the cell broadband engine (Cell BE). Our main idea is to focus on performance issues that can be efficiently handled by the multicore and vector facilities of the Cell BE. We aim to offer to programmers an alternative way for high-performance graphics rather than the use of graphics processing units (GPUs). The Cell BE processor is the first implementation of a chip multiprocessor with a significant number of general purpose programmable cores. It is a heterogeneous multicore chip capable of massive floating point processing optimized for computation-intensive workloads that opens up the possibility of implementing highly parallel graphics application on a single chip. Our goal in this tutorial is to introduce the cell BE architecture, show the main differences in its programming model, describe its development environment, and give some step-by-step examples of Cell BE programs. We also introduce the usage of a Playstation 3 (PS3) as a high-performance cell platform.