IBM and Devs cooperate to tap PS3’s Cell

 

Obviously, it would be easier to learn the ins and outs of the PS3’s Cell processor if the people who actually created the chip were there to guide you along. Well, here’s some good news folks.

Next Generation reports that a workshop held this week at High Moon Studios‘ Carlsbad, California offices is bringing together IBM engineers and game developers across multiple Vivendi Games studios (including High Moon, Radical Entertainment, and Swordfish) to learn how to maximize the multi-core Cell processor in the PS3. Multi-core processor experts from RapidMind will also participate in the workshop.

So what’s the dev’s take on all of this? Well, Clinton Keith, High Moon chief Technical officer had this to say:

We’ve been talking to Sony for almost two years now, but they didn’t create the Cell. …They created the architecture for the PS3 and theyÂ’ve created a lot of the developer libraries. WeÂ’ve had access to those [Sony] engineers… but theyÂ’re not the hardware engineers. We want to hit [the Cell] on all fronts. WeÂ’re talking to the guys [IBM] who designed this chip and have been working on it for five years now.

The developers and IBM’s chief engineers will be working together during hands-on programming and knowledge-sharing sessions as they peer into the inner workings of the PS3’s Cell. Participating programming teams will be using software development kits from IBMÂ’s Global Engineering Solutions labs. To add a healthy sense of competition to the workshop, groups will be going against each other in an effort to create the best Cell-based game development algorithm.

Will this mean better games for the PS3 and less complaints about how hard it is to program for the PS3? Time will tell.

 

Obviously, it would be easier to learn the ins and outs of the PS3’s Cell processor if the people who actually created the chip were there to guide you along. Well, here’s some good news folks.

Next Generation reports that a workshop held this week at High Moon Studios‘ Carlsbad, California offices is bringing together IBM engineers and game developers across multiple Vivendi Games studios (including High Moon, Radical Entertainment, and Swordfish) to learn how to maximize the multi-core Cell processor in the PS3. Multi-core processor experts from RapidMind will also participate in the workshop.

So what’s the dev’s take on all of this? Well, Clinton Keith, High Moon chief Technical officer had this to say:

We’ve been talking to Sony for almost two years now, but they didn’t create the Cell. …They created the architecture for the PS3 and theyÂ’ve created a lot of the developer libraries. WeÂ’ve had access to those [Sony] engineers… but theyÂ’re not the hardware engineers. We want to hit [the Cell] on all fronts. WeÂ’re talking to the guys [IBM] who designed this chip and have been working on it for five years now.

The developers and IBM’s chief engineers will be working together during hands-on programming and knowledge-sharing sessions as they peer into the inner workings of the PS3’s Cell. Participating programming teams will be using software development kits from IBMÂ’s Global Engineering Solutions labs. To add a healthy sense of competition to the workshop, groups will be going against each other in an effort to create the best Cell-based game development algorithm.

Will this mean better games for the PS3 and less complaints about how hard it is to program for the PS3? Time will tell.