   Cell Processor/RSX Graphics Programming API on PS3?
  Hi to all.Currently I figured out that my nice PS3 has a locked GPU(as all PS3s have). This sucks, I thought firstly, but then the cell processor came into mymind. This means, I thought of a graphics api for the cell processor, to not have to develop a complete new software renderer, I secondly thought of a still developed api!Of course, this api must be freely available, because students have no money left, after they have bought a PS3! ;)Is there any API out there?What I found at IBM Home was just a SIMD Math lib, but this cant be all(according to my question)!Poor Sony. This is all I can say to that. This is like driving with a pulled hand break!Anyway.ThanksAlex[Edited by - directNoob on January 4, 2008 2:24:22 AM]
  as far as i know ps3 was designed for gaming not for programming.and i dont think its about gpu.gnerally their gpu is spesial edition[modified physically for hardvare .][cpu chanced with standards before some years.]so if you planning to use ps3's gpu on your pc its not directly about a lock but yes effectively this makes it locked anyway.and i think they hawe a simulator for ps3.and a.f.a.i.k. they selling a free sdk for ps3 if you hawe original ps3.[for linux/windows/ + mac?]so anywas  a.f.a.i.k. its possible to use your gpu on pc but it will take realy too much.;  Disregarding what RSC_x said; Under the OtherOS mode, the GPU is effectively locked away by the hypervisor. An SPU based rasterizer would seem like a great idea. Nicolas Capens's work could make for a great foundation, and if you can get the guys doing Mesa to work on this the result may be pretty much amazing..   ;  I was thinking, maybe you could utilise Mesa 3D ? It is a software OpenGL driver that "might" work o cell. I will istall YDL and check if it works. There are some roumors, that mesa for cell was optimized, but of course, it can not beat a geforce native opengl implementation.   ;  Ok, thanks.You mean Mesa 3D. Good. I searched for Mesa and the cell processor, but I couldnt really find anything.If i install these drivers on my ps3, will this lib work properly?Has nobody any experience with the PS3 and the Mesa Lib.And of course, is the Mesa lib the only graphics library which could be deployed on the ps3 or are there others?ThanksAlex   ;  You can use the gpu fully now in linux. no mods needed but just need to install linux and the new video driver, go check ps2dev forums and you'll see it there. You can also see some of the work they are doing on getting libs ported over and supporting the gpu.   ;  Hi razor950.Thanks alot. I know this site, but I haven't known that they also handle the PS3 topic. Anyway. I looked over it, but I have to investigate more time on it, because it looks very interesting. So thanks. Exactly what I have looked for.Greetings Alex   ;  i started this thread on the mesa3d mailing list as im running into problemsi can confirm that the ppc version compiles with no problems and works through an X server....... not too desirable with only 256mb ramhopefully there is a solution in this threadhttp://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=669199.21290.qm%40web43138.mail.sp1.yahoo.com&forum_name=mesa3d-usersi will be replying to it in the next couple of days in hope of some clearer info on it   ;  We had a course in our university related to cell programming where the our teacher created a simple raycaster using sdl as outputting graphics.It worked well and fast, but of course no access to graphics hw hurt the the fps alot.Like razor950 said there is a way to use the the rsx now, but it's a hack which sony could fix with any patch. Hopefully it will be fully open to linux in the future.If you're interested in other cell code, we did create a huffman coding for single(powerpc core) and multi(powerpc core + all the vector cores) threaded environments in cell where we got 10-30 times speed up with multithread version. And without much of black magic(algos where same for st and mt versions) in benchmarks :D   ;  Sandelz: as of fw version 2.10 sony has patched the method that allowed people to access the fifo buffer, its unclear whether sony are just patching a bug i.e sending 0 in the request, but unfortunately not enough is known about the hypervisor to confirm this .... also sony hasnt commenteddis your uni publish the code to this ray tracer? would be interested to look at it