Hi,

Squeak runs fine on the PS3.

76190476 bytecodes/sec, 2862429 sends/sec

Yellow Dog Linux 5.0, 3.9-7067 image, and 3.7-7 Unix vm.  VM compiled  
fine once I disabled the browser plug-in.

It looks very nice on an HDTV.  The system feels very responsive and  
has been stable.

But remember this is not taking advantage of the nifty bits of the  
Cell processor.  On the PS3 you have 6 available SPE units with 128  
128 bit registers and 256KB local memory per SPE.  The stock Squeak  
is not going to do anything with those at all.

I think there are a couple of ways to take advantage of the SPEs.

One approach would be to write special primitives that offload work  
to the SPEs.   That seems relatively straightforward although I'm  
sure it would take a good bit of work.

The other would involve building an entirely new VM that runs  
(partially or completely) directly on one or more of the SPEs.   SPEs  
are not just vector processors, they can do general purpose computing  
too.  Also, I believe SPEs can access the local stores of the other  
SPEs and maybe directly access other SPE registers as well.  I think  
the potential for "memory bandwidth, memory bandwidth, and memory  
bandwidth" is there, but I don't know how efficient they would be in  
that situation, or lots of other things about how that might work.   
But I think it would be interesting.

I found a paper where a Java VM was ported to the Cell PPE and  
SPE's:   http://www.ics.uci.edu/~franz/Site/pubs-pdf/ICS-TR-06-17.pdf

I would appreciate any input from VM gurus on the potential  
performance of a Squeak Cell-enabled VM.

-Jerry Bell








On Jan 17, 2007, at 12:18 PM, Aaron Reichow wrote:

> Hello everyone-
>
> I just had a quick question- does anyone here have a PlayStation  
> 3?  If so, have you tried running Squeak? You do have to install it  
> yourself, but it can be done without a modchip or anything else  
> DMCA-breaking.
> You can use a keyboard and a mouse, attached using USB- no need to  
> write new code to use the controller, though that'd be fun too.   
> I'm curious what a "0 tinyBenchmarks" produces, not that is the  
> best benchmark in the world or the VM would be optimized.  Anywho,  
> if anyone is working on this I'd be interested in hearing about it!
>
> Info on getting Linux on your PS3 here:
> http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-linuxps3-1/? 
> ca=dgr-lnxw07Linux-and-PlayStation%203
>
> Regards,
> Aaron
>