Hello,
So has anyone got their PS3 yet? A store claims to have the 60 gb model
a not too far distance away and I am tempted. But I do not want to be
first on the block to get one.
73 Eric
On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 08:48:22PM -0500, Eric A. Cottrell wrote:
Hello,
So has anyone got their PS3 yet? A store claims to have the 60 gb model
a not too far distance away and I am tempted. But I do not want to be
first on the block to get one.73 Eric
I have had access to one remotely for a while, and received one from
Fry’s a couple of days ago, though I haven’t found time to mess with
it yet.
The remote one I was using was running Fedora Core 5 and had the IBM
SDK installed on it. That’s how I’m going to set mine up. I have
benchmarked the USB throughput on it with the USRP. Input is good
(32MB/s), but output is a little slow (28MB/s). This is consistent
with what we’ve seen on other PPC’s including dual processor G5’s.
GNU Radio builds on the PS3, but you’ve got to be patient. It took
about 30 minutes, and that was after splitting gnuradio_swig_python
into the 5 pieces. It’s currently not passing “make check”.
I haven’t spent any time tracking it down, but it may to that I’m
generating .so’s that are 64-bit while python is compiled in 32-bit
mode.
Eric
Eric A. Cottrell wrote:
Hello,
So has anyone got their PS3 yet? A store claims to have the 60 gb model
a not too far distance away and I am tempted. But I do not want to be
first on the block to get one.
I picked up a PS3 a few weeks ago, and just got Gentoo booting on it
(60GB version). Out of the box, I think I set the CFLAGS wrong because
the new stuff I’ve compiled is 32bit. I’ve built the cross toolchain
for the SPU’s and successfully ran a test program or two.
Be mindful, as Eric said, compiles are slow. The CellBE drastically
dropped cost and heat by not efficiently handling out-of-order code. I
don’t have the link handy, but the IBM CellBE development center has a
PDF intro to coding for the Cell which shows how to handle if;then;else
statements in an efficient manner. Anything not coded that way will be
horribly inefficient. Hence, the long compile times on a dual core,
3.2GHz processor. 
hth,
Jason.
On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 08:22:06AM -0500, Jason wrote:
for the SPU’s and successfully ran a test program or two.
Be mindful, as Eric said, compiles are slow. The CellBE drastically
dropped cost and heat by not efficiently handling out-of-order code. I
don’t have the link handy, but the IBM CellBE development center has a
PDF intro to coding for the Cell which shows how to handle if;then;else
statements in an efficient manner. Anything not coded that way will be
horribly inefficient. Hence, the long compile times on a dual core,
3.2GHz processor.
Regarding slow compilation, without measuring, I’d guess:
(1) not enough memory for compiler footprint
(2) slow drive
Also, it’s not really a dual-core machine. More like hyper-threaded.
Eric
I understand the need and/or desire to do this natively but we really
want to be doing cross platform for this target. 256 MB is not enough
for these large compiles.
DO NOT get on Terra’s Yellow Dog pre-installed PS3 list if you have not
already done so. They have taken the $100 with no guarantee and they
will not even hazard a guess as to a delivery date. I did not save a
single dime since I could have download FC5 and IBM Cell SDK2.0 for free
and done the install myself and purchased the thing from Fry’s or
elsewhere. IBM has a step by step procedure for doing the Linux
install on their web site. Myriad videos doing disk drive upgrades,
etc. are on YouTube. I am not pleased with Terra AT ALL. People are
able to get one and leave the store from Fry’s and do the install
themselves. I do not want to wait until March so I am going to use an
extra lever I have that most people do not have (think of it as the fake
wheel chair person going to the head of the line at Disney World and you
will understand) but this is good for one only.
Bob
Jason wrote:
toolchain for the SPU’s and successfully ran a test program or two.
Jason.
Discuss-gnuradio mailing list
[email protected]
Discuss-gnuradio Info Page
–
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(sig required by employer)
On 1/16/07, Bob McGwier [email protected] wrote:
I understand the need and/or desire to do this natively but we really
want to be doing cross platform for this target. 256 MB is not enough
for these large compiles.
I’ve spent a little time trying to build GNU Radio for my EFIKA board
using OpenEmbedded. Currently, I have the configure script running to
the point it starts looking for cppunit. It fials there. I suspect
some hacking at the OE recipe for cppunit may be required in order for
the GNU Radio configure script to find it.
Now I will demonstrate my lack of understanding of GNU Radio 
I suspect cppunit generates the checks used by the make check step of
the build instructions. Since this is a cross build, non of the
executables will actually run on the build system. I should be able to
make the test programs, but they would need to run on the target
system. While it should be possible to work out the cppunit problem I
have, in the short term, is there a way to disable the need for
cppunit?
If anyone is seriously interested in building GNU Radio with OE, I’d
be glad to help get you started.
Philip
On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 10:03:40PM -0500, Eric A. Cottrell wrote:
and done the install myself and purchased the thing from Fry’s or
Hello Bob,
Thanks for the information. I had questions on how to install linux on
the thing. Alot easier than the XBox.
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-linuxps3-1/The web page indicates the video options may be limited. No VGA and the
HDMI requires monitors with HCP.
There appear to be some HDMI to DVI cables available. I’ve ordered
one, but it hasn’t come yet.
Likely Terra is low on the allocation list since they are not a major
game retailer.73 Eric
Eric
Bob McGwier wrote:
elsewhere. IBM has a step by step procedure for doing the Linux
install on their web site. Myriad videos doing disk drive upgrades,
etc. are on YouTube. I am not pleased with Terra AT ALL. People are
able to get one and leave the store from Fry’s and do the install
themselves. I do not want to wait until March so I am going to use an
extra lever I have that most people do not have (think of it as the fake
wheel chair person going to the head of the line at Disney World and you
will understand) but this is good for one only.Bob
Hello Bob,
Thanks for the information. I had questions on how to install linux on
the thing. Alot easier than the XBox.
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-linuxps3-1/
The web page indicates the video options may be limited. No VGA and the
HDMI requires monitors with HCP.
Likely Terra is low on the allocation list since they are not a major
game retailer.
73 Eric
On 1/17/07, Eric B. [email protected] wrote:
In general, is OE the answer, or are there other cross development
environments that we should be looking at? It looks like OE was
designed to solve the “build an entire system image, including kernel,
boot loader, etc”. That may be overkill for the PS3. On the other
hand, if OE solves the “configure in the cross development
environment”, then maybe it is the easiest way to get going.
I am aware of at least a couple other cross systems; buildroot and
crosstools. Buildroot generates complete images, much like OE, but is
allegedly simpler to get styarted with. The problem with buildroot is
targetting multiple hardware targets. I also think it is more oriented
to the uclibc guys. Crosstools manages cros compilers and maybe
libraries. Disclaimer: I’ve chateed with a couple of guys who like
buildroot and knwo very little about crosstools
I’ve been using OE to build images form the TI Omap Starter Kit (OSK)
based on the OSSIE SCA work we do at VT. Recently I received one of
the EFIKA boards. (The OSK is ARM based, EFIKA is powerpc). I was able
to produce images for the EFIKA based on my existing work for the OSK
within a few days. Most of the time spent working on the EFIKA was
going through issues setting up OE for the EFIKA, and concerned with
how to build OSSIE.
The EFIKA actually has a reasonable amount of RAM and a hard drive, so
I took a quick look at building GNU radio for it. OE already has
support for boost, cppunit, and the other GNU Radio dependencies. I
added support for FFTW (it builds, not sure how well it works yet).
At this point, there are some isses with the configure script locating
cppunit.
Why use OE even though it seems like overkill?
OE provides a complete environment for cross work. It manages the
entire tool chain automatically. This means that two people working on
GNU Radio for the PS3 have a chance of having the same problems GNU
Radio is a complex piece of software that depends on several tools and
libraries to build. Managing your local cross enviroment by hand will
become painfull. You will need to extract some libraries from whatever
distro you run on the PPC and cross build copies of libraries that are
not provided. And be very carefully with build paths.
Ultimately with the cell, I suspect that we need a “dual
cross-compilation” environment since you need two tool chains
installed, one for the PPE and one for the SPE.
I need to solve a similar problem for the OMAP. I suspect cross
building for the SPE’s (and DSP’s) will be a little easier, since
there will be less package dependencies to manage and everyone is
building cross for them anyway. Long term I have some thoughts about
how to integrate “coprocessor” builds into the OE structure.
Philip
On Wed, Jan 17, 2007 at 07:47:02AM -0500, Philip B. wrote:
Now I will demonstrate my lack of understanding of GNU Radio
I suspect cppunit generates the checks used by the make check step of
the build instructions. Since this is a cross build, non of the
executables will actually run on the build system. I should be able to
make the test programs, but they would need to run on the target
system. While it should be possible to work out the cppunit problem I
have, in the short term, is there a way to disable the need for
cppunit?
Even in the cross compilation environment, the cppunit stuff should
build and link OK. Running the tests on the host machine is a
different problem, but solving that isn’t specific to cppunit. We’ll
also have the same problem with all of the “make check” tests.
There’s no easy way to remove the cppunit stuff. You’d have to edit
a good percentage of the Makefile.am’s. I think that we ought to
build the unit tests. They should be runnable once everything is
installed on the host system.
If anyone is seriously interested in building GNU Radio with OE, I’d
be glad to help get you started.
Thanks for your offer!
In general, is OE the answer, or are there other cross development
environments that we should be looking at? It looks like OE was
designed to solve the “build an entire system image, including kernel,
boot loader, etc”. That may be overkill for the PS3. On the other
hand, if OE solves the “configure in the cross development
environment”, then maybe it is the easiest way to get going.
Ultimately with the cell, I suspect that we need a “dual
cross-compilation” environment since you need two tool chains
installed, one for the PPE and one for the SPE.
Eric
On Wed, Jan 17, 2007 at 11:56:58AM -0800, Eric B. wrote:
The web page indicates the video options may be limited. No VGA and the
HDMI requires monitors with HCP.There appear to be some HDMI to DVI cables available. I’ve ordered
one, but it hasn’t come yet.
Bear in mind the resulting DVI will still be encrypted/protected by
HDCP, so if your monitor doesn’t do HDCP the cable won’t solve the
problem. There is not likely to be any [legitimate] product that
simply removes the HDCP (and leaves the signal digital) since that
sort of defeats the entire purpose of HDCP. The “Ophit DDA” converter
supposedly takes DVI+HDCP as input and produces unprotected analog VGA
as output, but don’t know if anyone has ever tried it with a PS3.
-Dave Dodge2007/1/17, Philip B. [email protected]:
If anyone is seriously interested in building GNU Radio with OE, I’d
be glad to help get you started.Philip
I am very much interested in this. Maybe it would be a good idea to
add an embedded section to the gnuradio wiki?
–
Trond D.
Mine arrives on Wednesday unless I am mistaken. Has anyone installed
Fedora Core and the boot-game-os app and had it work? I know it does
under YDL. I have both distro’s in iso form. My wife forced me to buy
Tiger Woods golf so she insists that gaming not be disabled. ;-).
This is definitely not for me (former low handicapper gone to seed).
Bob
Dave Dodge wrote:
HDCP, so if your monitor doesn’t do HDCP the cable won’t solve the
problem. There is not likely to be any [legitimate] product that
simply removes the HDCP (and leaves the signal digital) since that
sort of defeats the entire purpose of HDCP. The “Ophit DDA” converter
supposedly takes DVI+HDCP as input and produces unprotected analog VGA
as output, but don’t know if anyone has ever tried it with a PS3.-Dave Dodge
–
Robert W. McGwier, Ph.D.
Center for Communications Research
805 Bunn Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
(609)-924-4600
(sig required by employer)
On 1/16/07, Bob McGwier [email protected] wrote:
I understand the need and/or desire to do this natively but we really
want to be doing cross platform for this target. 256 MB is not enough
for these large compiles.
OK, I can build gnuradio for the EFIKA board (powerpc) using OE now.
Well, the compile finishes. If anyone has an EFIKA and wants to test
it drop me an email. I do not think there are any graphics in my build
and I had to disable gr-atsc and gr-video-sdl because they did not
build.
To repeat this for a PS3, some work creating a machine definition fo
rthe PS3 is required. I don’t actually have a PS3, so I’m only a
little help there. Or you could send me a PS3 and hope I work on it
Philip
On Thu, 2007-01-18 at 14:56 -0500, Philip B. wrote:
…and I had to disable gr-atsc and gr-video-sdl because they did not
build.
What was the issue with gr-atsc?
–
Johnathan C., AE6HO
Corgan Enterprises LLC
[email protected]
I think Gentoo will provide us with a very capable cross dev
environment.
I’ve installed Gentoo on a PS3 and used its built-in distributed compile
and crossdev features to offload most compiling of the normal linux
binaries for the PS3 onto my workhorse machines. Unfortunately the state
of cell specific development right now is in my opinion still
somewhat… inconvenient.
From what I have been reading I believe gcc-4.3 and the latest version of
other build utilities will clean up alot of these problems and make it
very simple for gentoo distcc/crossdev machines to build gnuradio and
its
dependencies for the cell with SPE support. I’ve been hanging out on the
#gentoo-ppc64 irc chan and think those guys are doing great work toward
getting the distro very close to what we want. I’m just about ready to
try
an all gcc-4.3 based build on a number of boxes. Some info from the
Gentoo
cell team’s tool chain status can be found at:
http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/ToolchainStatus
If anyone else is working on the PS3 Gentoo route please e-mail me and
we
can try to work through problems together.
BTW, does GNU Radio have an IRC chan?
On Thu, Jan 18, 2007 at 01:27:51PM -0800, Kyle Kuypers wrote:
I think Gentoo will provide us with a very capable cross dev environment.
I’ve installed Gentoo on a PS3 and used its built-in distributed compile
and crossdev features to offload most compiling of the normal linux
binaries for the PS3 onto my workhorse machines.
OK. I’m assuming that these aren’t specific to Gentoo.
At a minimum, I’d like a generic Linux solution.
Unfortunately the state of cell specific development right now is
in my opinion still somewhat… inconvenient.
From what I have been reading I believe gcc-4.3 and the latest version of
other build utilities will clean up alot of these problems and make it
very simple for gentoo distcc/crossdev machines to build gnuradio and its
dependencies for the cell with SPE support. I’ve been hanging out on the
#gentoo-ppc64 irc chan and think those guys are doing great work toward
getting the distro very close to what we want. I’m just about ready to try
an all gcc-4.3 based build on a number of boxes. Some info from the Gentoo
cell team’s tool chain status can be found at:
http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/cell/wiki/ToolchainStatus
Thanks for the link.
Absent other solid info, I’d stick with the IBM provided FC5.
Are you sure that Gentoo’s got all the PS3 patches, numactl support,
etc?
Does the Gentoo Cell kernel support 2-way SMP?
If anyone else is working on the PS3 Gentoo route please e-mail me and we
can try to work through problems together.BTW, does GNU Radio have an IRC chan?
Nope. Feel free to start one somewhere.
Eric