Date Posted: November 9, 2005
Overview
What is IBM Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit ?
This technology has graduated.
IBM Cell Broadband Engine SDK has become part of an IBM product called IBM SDK for Multicore Acceleration, Version 3. The SDK is available for both Fedora 7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1. The SDK is available for download from both Passport Advantage and developerWorks. For details, please see the developerWorks Cell Broadband Engine Resource Center.About the technology author(s)
Version 2.1 of the Cell Broadband Engine SDK builds on the significant work started as part of the Sony-Toshiba-IBM Design Center.
The STI Software team, comprising engineers from Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, was formed in 2001 in order to provide software input for the definition of the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture and to establish effective programming techniques that take advantage of the power of the Cell Broadband Engine. The team included experts from systems architecture, firmware, kernel, system libraries, application frameworks, graphics, and advanced computer math. In addition to its early role in architecture definition and programming interface refinement, the team developed and successfully brought up the initial Linux for Cell, wrote hundreds of test cases supporting Cell Broadband Engine chip validation and stress testing, and established an initial set of software and tool chain standards for the emerging Cell Broadband Engine programming community.
In support of the software framework design, library, workload, and test case development, the team produced over a million lines of functional code. Not only did the team explore the application domains of video gaming and graphics on Cell Broadband Engine, it also ventured into high-performance technical computing including video surveillance, cryptography, bioinformatics technologies, and many other fields. The famous, world-class Terrain Rendering Engine, which has received many rave reviews, was a jewel created by the many talents of this team.
In a joint effort with IBM Yorktown Research Lab, IBM Toronto compiler team, Austin Research Lab, Böblingen Linux Technology Centers, and the SCEA software team, the STI software team produced Version 1.0 of the SDK.
For Versions 1.1, 2.0, and 2.1 of the SDK, the original STI Software team was extended to include a broad set of participants throughout IBM""s global team with participants from IBM""s Systems Group, the Linux Technology Center, Software Group, and Research with no fewer than 11 IBM locations participating. Together, this team is further developing software surrounding the Cell Broadband Processor Architecture in order to support the expanding Cell Broadband Engine system and to support IBM Systems as well as services from IBM Technology Collaboration Solutions. IBM continues to collaborate with Sony and Toshiba on the development of the Cell Broadband Engine system in areas such as specifications, Linux, and toolchain.
