I will see about playing around with it this weekend. I spent yesterday getting Linux back after updating to custom firmware a year ago and removed otherOS anyway. I was missing the ps3dd disk and finally got it back. Unfortunately, it ate my Debian install and my Fedora, Debian, and ArchLinux ppc builds are no longer valid as the repos are not there (was using minimal net install).
Yes the Cell BE in the PS3 is a single core, dual thread 64 bit PPC chip (PPE). But it was modified for pipelining so it is an in order execution chip instead of out of order execution. It does limited out of order executions. The SPEs are what make it shine. The Xbox360 is using a tri-core version of the PPE without the SPEs, but it has 128 registers for VMX128 while the CELL does not. They both support Altivec though so⌠But they are based on the Power 2.02 ISA and the POWER4 chip. So that should be in the same generation as the G4/G5 Macs.
Anyway, if Void will not boot, I may be able to make a CHROOT from T2 to Void. Rene Rebe currently has a 64bit version of T2 that will boot on the PS3. The versions of GNU/Linux that I used before were PowerPC (not 64bit) due to the 256MiB of RDR(XDR) that the PS3 has available as system memory.
T2 is really cool actually lol. I wish I had the gumption to play with it. Make a Pentium M proprietary linux. Thatâd be GREAT. Too much time though.
I thought the CELL used in the PS3 was a 7 core with tool cores set for audio and all that guff? Similar to an SOC? I admittedly know very little on the CELL family.
No. You are talking about the Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). They are basically DSPs or vector CoProcessors. The PPEâs main job is to manage and feed them, hence the stripped down, in order PPE.
The PS3 actually has 8 SPEs. On the 90 nm Cell BEs, they had bad yields so they turned one of them off on boot, the weakest of the bunch. Then they restrict a random one on startup to run Sonyâs security code and the hypervisor. On the 64nm and new processes, all of the SPEs are good but they just evict one on start up for compatibility purposes.
So my PS3 that is running GNU/Linux has 8 good SPEs so I actually run them all. My PS3 without GNU/Linux is unstable with all SPEs running so it has been relegated to the duties of gaming only.
**Edit
IBM was working on a Multi-Core version of the PPE with 32 SPEs but I donât think it was ever released. The killed the project around 2009 as x86 and POWER had generally caught up with their 2004 love child with STI. Cell is still better at doing some things compared to modern technology, but those victories are highly specialized and antiquated.
If you want all SPEs to be good, then you want a NOR Flash (65nm) or Slim (40nm) PS3. These only have 16MiB of Flash though so a little more finicky with otherOS support.
The NAND Flash are better for hacking and are more desired. IF you want a better guarantee of all SPEs working on a NAND, then you want to find a NAND Flash (256MiB) that has software emulation for PS2 instead of hardware emulation.
I have both. My hacking PS3 is a NAND soft emu, my gaming PS3 is a NAND hard emu.
I tested a few builds of T2 for Rene to see if mortals could get it running. Was not easy at the time but I had a lot of experience poking the PS3 on official firmware. The last version that I tested for him was in Jan. He has done some great work since then and he has documented this on his YT channel. I just have not fired it up yet. Big issue was getting petitboot to recognize the kernel.
with the firmware cracked you can downgrade to any level and any version of the firmware (for fat and slim respectively) once in the firmware vs you want with other os then install like normal
I am a fan of alternative architectures. I have MIPS and ARM in the house doing things. I used to use the PS3 for video encoding and learning how to optimize multi-thread parallel programming. A good learning tool.
Thanks. I already know how to do that. That is not the issue really. I am running CFW 4.71.1 Rebug on that PS3 currently. The original issue was that I upgraded from OFW 3.15 to CFW 4.70 and it vflashed the NOR partition on my NAND PS3 and borked it. Now that my Flash has been restored. I have otherOS again. but as a result, my otherOS HDD partition got wiped so I am having a time finding an ISO of a GNU/Linux release that supports the PS3 besides T2.
The issue is that none of the modern distros support ppc or ppc64 and they have removed their repositories. I previously ran ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and ArchLinux PPC. They now exclusively support ppc64el (except Arch) which will not work on the PS3. T2 is the only modern *nix that works. I could try BSD but I donât think that has been maintained for PS3 since 2011.
Also, I did not know that PS3 was based on Power 7. That is good to know.
Iâll give it a try soon and see what happens. Donât need graphical as much as I need to get the IBM Cell SDK installed so that I can work on ffmpeg optimizations for the PS3 to use the SPEs. besides the new Ryzen stuff, there is still nothing faster or more efficient at encoding audio and video.
