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Cell Developer's Corner Resources for Cell Broadband Engine™ development.

• Power.org's Cell technology discussion forum
  Have a question? Have a helpful hint? Connect with other experts on the Cell Discussion Forum.
• Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) Software Development Kit (SDK)
  Cell BE Software Development Kit provides everything Cell software developers need in order to create, build, simulate, and test Cell applications. It includes not only a cohesive set of development tools, but also a simulated environment capable of running the latest Linux kernel with Cell BE architecture extensions and run-time support. This simulated environment allows Cell programmers to develop and run Cell applications even without the access to a Cell BE hardware system.
  • Download the Cell BE SDK [IBM alphaworks]
  • Cell SDK Resources, Quick Reference, Tips and Code Samples

Workshops and Conferences:

• De Nayer Institute, in cooperation with IBM, presents 2-day workshop on Cell BE
  The workshop will take place on September 10-11, 2007 at the De Nayer Institute in Sint-Katelijne-Waver near Mechelen. On September 12, 2007, there will be a matchmaking event between suppliers of Cell BE products and services and interested parties. This day will be free of charge and is open to everyone.
  
• One-Day IBM Cell Programming Workshop at U of California, San Diego on May 25th, 2007
  The workshop consists of a series of lectures and hands-on exercises in a Cell development environment to familiarize the students with Cell programming skills and tools usage on recently released Cell SDK2.1 and the new libspe2.1.
  
• Workshop on Solving Computational Challenges in Medical Imaging (WSCCMI)
  The University of Washington is pleased to organize a two-day workshop to bring leaders in academia and industry together to discuss the current status, unmet clinical needs, challenges, and opportunities in medical imaging from computational perspectives.
  
• One-Day IBM Cell Programming Workshop at Georgia Tech
  The workshop consists of a series of lectures and hands-on exercises in a Cell development environment to familiarize the students with Cell basic programming skills. Also available for download are vmware-based Cell appliances (consisting of FC5+SDK2.0+Tools) and presentations via streaming media.
  
• Summit on Software and Algorithms for the Cell Processor
  A technical workshop hosted by the Innovative Computing Laboratory at the University of Tennessee. The focus was development of algorithms and software for the IBM Cell processor, and to look for directions for future research and development. A small small group of users got together to share experiences and ideas on the Cell Broadband Engine.
  
• Cell Broadband Engine Architecture workshop
  This workshop consists of two days of technical training and the opportunity to explore the details of Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) programming with hands-on exercises.
  

Programmability Tools and Helpful Documentation:

• RapidMind Developer Portal: An online resource for everything related to development on the RapidMind platform
  Registration is free, and once you've created an account, you will have access to RapidMind's online knowledge base, advanced sample code, forums, and a searchable version of the Reference Guide.
  
• Gedae and the Cell Broadband Engine
  IBM and Gedae have formed a powerful alliance to address the challenges associated with programming multicore processors. Gedae programming software can help simplify the complexities of programming your signal and data processing applications.
  
  • Technical brief on IBM and Gedae collaboration [PDF]
  • Combating obsolescence in high-performance multiprocessor software [PDF]
• Octopiler: Supporting Automatic SIMD and Heterogeneous Parallelism
  Learn how the compiler handles automatic SIMDization and performance optimization.
  
• Exploiting the Full System Simulator
  Article discussing how to examine the SPU pipeline configuration, performance metric, and trace facilities available.
  
• Cell Broadband Engine papers and technical specifications
  A repository of Cell architecture interface specifications, APIs, papers, and technical documentation.
  

Cell BE Training:

• Budapest Tech to Integrate Cell Broadband Engine Technology Into Curriculum for Fall 2007
  Budapest Polytechnic Institution (Budapest Tech) announced today that for its upcoming Fall 2007 semester, it will offer a Bachelor of Science fully credited course in Computer Science and Engineering that equips students with the knowledge around the next generation Cell Broadband Engine technology.
  
• An 65nm SPE for a 1 petaflop supercomputer [PDF]
  At the recent COOL Chips X conference, IBM's Brian Flachs presented progress on the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture family of processors. His presentation, for the first time, publicly discloses aspects of a new member of the family which is being designed for use in HPC applications. Get your FLOPS by the hundreds here!
  
• One-Day IBM Cell Programming Workshop at Georgia Tech
  Streaming presentation of a one-day hands-on workshop aimed at providing a jump start to Cell programming. Also available is a vmware appliance consisting of FC5, SDK2.0, Cell IDE.
  
• Follow MIT's course:"Multicore Programming Primer: Learn and Compete in Programming the PLAYSTATION®3 Cell Processor"
  This is a new IAP 2007 class offering open to all MIT students (undergraduates and graduates), giving students hands on experience in parallel programming in an exciting and relevant context. 
  
• Training Material and Presentations covered in IBM Cupertino Technical Briefings in June 2006
  Download the training materials presented by IBM at the Cell Workshop in Cupertino, June 2006.
  
• Cell BE Training Podcast Seminar Series - Track 1: Cell Software Development Overview
  This series of podcasts is a Cell Broadband Engine training series. The first track consists of 10 sessions that focus on the overall system development environment of the Cell processor. Each session is is made up of an audio file and a matching PowerPoint file. Please see the agenda for a detailed description of each session. This training is presented by expert speakers that are involved in Cell development.
  
• Presentation: Cell BE Software Solutions Programming Model [PDF]
  This document presents an overview of Cell programming models and best practices to exploit the features of Cell Architecture.
  
• Webcast: Mercury Computer Systems "Deploying the Cell Broadband Engine Processor in Military Ground Vehicles" [E-Cast]
  Join Mercury Computer Systems for their webcast, which provides an overview of the PowerBlock 200, including its processing capabilities, I/O configuration, and ATR chassis infrastructure. Developers and early innovators, who are considering the Cell BE processor for rugged applications, can benefit from this seminar.
• Seminar: Mercury Computer Systems "Using Multicore Framework (MCF) Software to Harness the Power of the Cell BE Processor" [Mercury]
  This seminar covers the MultiCore Framework (MCF) from Mercury Computer Systems, a middleware API that enables message passing and stream programming models by using the Cell BE processor's SPE cores as "function offload engines." It provides an overview of the PowerBlock 200, including its processing capabilities, I/O configuration, and ATR chassis infrastructure. Developers and early innovators who are considering the Cell BE processor for rugged applications can benefit from this seminar.

Demos:

• Interactive FEM on Cell Broadband Engine
  The solver is capable of computing dynamic non-linear problems from solid mechanics using a Newton-Krylov Multigrid algorithm with unprecedented performance.
  
• Cell Power at GDC 2007
  At GDC, IBM shows off a Linux based PS3 real-time rendering a complex (3 million triangle) urban landscape, at 1080p resolution, using only software rendering techniques (iRT).
  
• Texture Mapping with Cell
  Article discussing the impressive results achieved, establishing a proof point that Cell can be used for texture mapping. Learn how.
  
• Potential of Cell Broadband Engine Microprocessor in the Healthcare Business with New Diagnostic Capabilities:
  
  • Cell Broadband Engine - Diagnostic of a Beating Heart (Video 1)
  • Cell Broadband Engine - Diagnostic of a Beating Heart (Video 2)
  • More details

Papers and Collaborative Research:

Cross-Industry

• A Rough Guide to Scientific Computing on the PlayStation 3
  The authors discuss the heart of the Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3), the CELL processor.
  
• CorePy Alpha Release Available
  CorePy is the synthetic programming environment for Python and has full support for the PowerPC, Altivec/VMX, and Cell SPU instruction sets on Linux and OS X.
  
• Digital Media Indexing on the Cell Processor
  This paper presents a case study of developing a digital media indexing application, code-named MARVEL, on the STI Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) processor.
  
• On the Design and Analysis of Irregular Algorithms on the Cell Processor: A Case Study of List Ranking
  This paper presents a complexity model for designing algorithms on the Cell processor, along with a systematic procedure for algorithm analysis.
  
• Multicore Surprises: Lessons Learned from Optimizing Sweep3D on the Cell Broadband Engine
  In IEEE/ACM International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2007), Long Beach, CA, March 2007.
  
• Peak-Performance DFA-based String Matching on the Cell Processor
  In Third IEEE/ACM International Workshop on System Management Techniques, Processes, and Services (SMTPS 2007), Long Beach, CA, March 2007.
  
• Challenges in Mapping Graph Exploration Algorithms on Advanced Multi-core Processors
  In IEEE/ACM International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2007), Long Beach, CA, March 2007.
  
• Multigrid finite element processor: First of its kind technology with Cell BE processing power
  Researchers at Digital Medics and the University of Dortmund developed the first ever Finite Element solver on the revolutionary Cell BE microprocessor manufactured by STI.
  
• MPI microtask for programming the Cell Broadband Engine processor
  Discusses a new programming model, MPI microtask, based on the standard Message Passing Interface (MPI) programming model for distributed-memory parallel machines.
  
• A Programming Example: Large FFT on the Cell Broadband Engine
  The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is one of the most important algorithms in the last several decades. With a multi-core SIMD implementation of the CBEA, the CBE has the capacity to perform huge computational tasks on a single chip. Learn how in this paper.
  
• A Parallel 64K Complex FFT Algorithm on the Cell Broadband Engine
  How to efficiently implement power-of-2 sized complex, 1D FFTs on the multi-core Cell Broadband Engine processor.
  
• Stanford University Software Project using Cell BE-Based Blades
  Sequoia is a portable, low-level language which is intended for programming modern machines, both parallel and superscalar, in which managing data allocation within and transfers throughout the machine's memory hierarchy is important for performance.
  
• NCSA IBM Cell Collaboration
  Explore design and benefits of the Cell architecture for use with scientific applications.
  
• The Potential of the Cell Processor for Scientific Computing
  Paper from the Computational Research Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discussing the tremendous potential of the Cell architecture for scientific computations in terms of both raw performance and power efficiency.
  
• Implementation of the Mixed-Precision High-Performance LINPACK Benchmark on the CELL Processor
  Interative refinement technique to get double precision results using single precision arithmetic. For additional information related to this work, see "Exploiting Single Precision Arithmetic and Achieving Full Precision Accuracy."
  

Medical Imaging

The following are papers from the University of Erlangen-Nurnburg:

• Tomographic Image Reconstruction using the Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) General Purpose Hardware [PDF]
  
• Implementation of a cone-beam backprojection algorithm on the Cell Broadband Engine processor [PDF]
  
• Statistical Cone–Beam CT Image Reconstruction using the Cell Broadband Engine [PDF]
  
• Hyperfast Parallel–Beam Backprojection [PDF]
  
• Hyperfast Perspective Cone–Beam Backprojection [PDF]
  
• Platform for high-performance imaging and visualization [PDF]
  
• Cell Broadband Engine Processor - an alternative platform for data acquisition, filtering, reconstruction and visualisation of medical imaging data [PDF]
  
• Hyperfast parallel-beam and cone-beam backprojection using the cell general purpose hardware [PDF]
  

Articles:

• IBM Doubles Down on Cell Blade [Marketwire]
  
  
• Mentor Graphics Announces Nucleus OS and EDGE (Eclipse) Developer Suite for the IBM Cell Broadband Engine Processor [Mexperts]
  
  
• Lincoln Lab Releases PVTOL Multicore Software Architecture [HPC Wire]
  
  
• Mayo Clinic and IBM Score Significant Advance in Real-Time Medical Imaging [IBM]
  
  
• RapidMind Platform v2.0 Enables Software Developers to More Quickly Deliver Higher-performing Applications [RapidMind]
  
  
• Broadcast International to Use Cell Broadband Engine Technology for Cutting-Edge Video Compression [MarketWire]
  
  
• IBM Looks to Cell Processor for Mainframe Acceleration [HPC Wire]
  
  
• Mayo Clinic and IBM Score Significant Advance in Real-Time Medical Imaging [Mayo Clinic]
  
  
• IBM and High Moon Studios host game developer "jam session" [Game Tomorrow]
  
  
• Cell BE University Challenge: IBM Announces First of Its Kind Cell Broadband Engine Contest for Students Across the Globe [Market Wire]
  
  
• Can software catch up to ICs? [EETimes]
  
  
• IBM's CELL Processor: Preview to Greatness? [PCSTATS]
  
  
• IBM ships Cell as part of canned cluster [The Register]
  
  
• Playstation 3 Chip: Origin of a new species [Austin American-Statesman]
  
  
• That's a lot of teraflops [Business Week]
  
  
• IBM Cell Broadband Engine wows Wellington animation conference [m-net]
  
  
• Cell chip likely to have broad impact [Austin American-Statesman]
  
  
• Researchers Analyze HPC Potential of Cell Processor [HPCwire]
  
  

Wikis and Blogs:

• Cell BE programming wiki
  According to the wiki owner, this wiki "is about programming on the IBM Cell Broadband Engine...here you will find how-tos, code snippets, and other material useful to make your life easier if you decide to work on this interesting architecture."
  

Additional Cell BE Resources:

• IBM DeveloperWorks Cell Broadband Engine Resource Center
  Not finding what your looking for? There is still more information on the Cell BE on IBM's DeveloperWorks site. [IBM DeveloperWorks]
  
• Sony's Cell Broadband Engine Site
  Sony's site for documents on Cell Broadband Engine technology and software components for the CBE processor. [Sony]
• Barcelona Supercomputing Center's Linux on CBE-Based Systems Site
  The Linux on CBE-based Systems web site at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) aims to provide information about how to enable linux on Cell Broadband Engine based systems. [BSC]
  

*Cell Broadband Engine is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.