Re: Transputer Development System, 2006? (aka Sony PS/3 runs multi-core Linux)

[Matt Jadud <mcj4@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Andrew,

Damian Dimmich at is working towards this; he had a paper in CPA 2006 
that explores just this issue, and has a working port of the 
Transterpreter (a small, portable runtime for occam-pi) to the Cell.

http://www.transterpreter.org/papers/dimmich-jacobsen-jadud-cpa-2006.pdf

Running on top of Yellow Dog would be the easy way in; Damian is 
exploring code distribution and code generation for multi-core targets 
like the Cell, and (currently) has 9 separate instances of the runtime 
environment on a single CPU.

See the paper for more details; also, since Damian is on this list, he 
might have additional comments or be able to address more specific 
questions that you or others might have.

Cheers,
Matt

Andrew Delin wrote:
> Team, I thought this was interesting.
>
> Why might we be interested in the release of Sony's PS/3 games console?
>
> Because it contains a multi-core Cell processor - and can run Linux.
>
> Fred and others - I am wondering if it is possible to release a KROC that targets this platform and takes advantage of the multiple processors inside the new Sony console. This would give a true parallel machine to run Occam-Pi. It could be used as a modern 'TDS' with several cores to run on.
>
> Nine cores is very tempting - and rather cheap. I understand the YD Linux distribution doesn't fully use all cores, but perhaps an Occam-Pi build could? If we can piggy back on the interest in Linux, perhaps we might get more interest in the process-oriented-design philosophy we've discussed on this group.