[gold-devel] PlayStation3 target

ADAM David Alan Martin adamlsd at gmail.com
Fri Apr 13 01:20:09 EDT 2007


On Apr 12, 2007, at 5:15 AM, James Lee wrote:

> Hey,
> The point of my ps3 email wasn't so much "hey, let's move to the PS3
> and scrap mac"... it was more "there's this really interesting
> platform... we should at least have a discussion about if we want to
> support it, and when..".
> So I completely agree with all your points.

	PS3 itself, by the time we start considering other PPC like ports,  
will be outdated a bit.  A PS3 like system, one based on Cell, and  
far more extensible might be worth considering.  It has much in  
common with what Justin and I foresee as the idea Gold platform.

>>> * Jbit has alot of experience with this platform.
>> How could you?  It's not even a year old?
>
> True, but I'm a professional PS3 developer.... spent alot of time
> learning the platform...

	Yeah, but it's only been out a few months.  Unless you had a  
developer model back in mid '06, you wouldn't have that much  
experience with it.  Nevertheless, not trying to knock your  
experience with it.  It's just I think we need a target platform  
where the extant experience level is far more mature.  (It's a  
function of platform age.  The last thing I want to do is spend 4  
months or so tracking down a "bug" in LSD which is trackable really  
to a fault in PS3 hardware that was as-yet undiscovered.  Most Mac  
quirks are well documented.)  That said, I would like to keep my ear  
to the ground on the PS3 and related Cell platforms.  In PPC game  
consoles, I find the x-box 360 and Wii also to be interesting  
hardware, for different reasons.  (Wii is cheap, and has sufficiently  
powerful hardware to make it interesting.  x-box 360 is close to  
PS3's power, and I think it's expandable, but who knows.)  I have  
considered messing with a GameCube experiment, after getting PPC LSD  
working.

>>         In other news, I understand you'll be leaving us for a  
>> while to
>> focus on your job, and on the PS development scene?  We'll miss your
>> assistance.  Hopefully you'll return to us in time to get Golem
>> working on top of Gold.  A year off might be in order in your case.
>> Good luck, and enjoy working on the PS scene.
>
> Thanks... I will still hang out in #gold, and still be up for a chat
> about gold/etc, so it'll basically be the same as now... But I really
> won't be doing any work on golem/etc... Breakpoint this year made me
> remember how much I love PS2 coding, and PS2 work is not compatible
> with other work ;)

	Understandable.  Architecture class this year reminded me how much I  
love assembly programming, which spurred my port to PPC a bit.  I'm  
having loads of fun writing the low level functionality of LSD for  
PPC.  If you will be available to finish writing Golem in a year's  
time, that'd be nice.

> --James

	In any case.  Keep in touch.  We still value your input.

--
ADAM David Alan Martin

FreeBSD Hacker, TCSH Hacker, general UNIX coding
Author of AutoFS for FreeBSD 6.x
LSD Kernel Lead Developer
Filesystem and Storage Lab, SUNY Stony Brook



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