As is known, the utilized in popular gaming console PS3 processor has eighth core and possesses large computational power.
Mercury systems reported that the prepared for release Multi Core plus SDK for PS 3- base package, will be shown exactly in the event SIGGRAPH, which is planned in this year on 6 August. The developer pack , proposed by Mercury, will ensure a sufficiently simple and effective method to extract the entire cell processor power and will allow to substantially simplify the programming process under multi core processors.
The license SDK (Multi-Core plus SDK for PS 3- base package), which works in Yellow dog Linux (Terra soft) will cost to developer 399 dollars.
Mercury promises, that Multi-Core plus SDK for PS 3- scientific algorithm library add-on package includes more than 600 functions for guaranteeing the effective work with applications resource, processed to Cell. In particular, there is more than 100 functions ( witch are optimized ) for processing signals and images .
Let us recall that the cell processor power has already drawn different establishments and projects, occupied by science and related to intensive calculations. For example, the project folding@Home PS3. However, the entire complexity exactly consisted in the fact that it was not and there are no methods to effectively execute in parallel processes, in particular, under the architecture processor cell. The development of the corresponding SDK , and also hardware (Sony will demonstrate motherboard with cell application and RSX on SIGGRAPH), probably soon we will see a completely effective and inexpensive supers-computer on cell base . :-)