 | Level: Introductory Sean Curry (seancurry.ut@gmail.com), Software Engineer, IBM
13 Nov 2007 This introductory tutorial, designed for the IBM SDK for Multicore
Acceleration, Version 3.0 (otherwise known as the Cell Broadband Engine SDK),
explores the Cell/B.E. processor IDE and gives developers a click-for-click
walk-through of building a simple project in this environment. This tutorial is broken into six quick-perform parts dealing with creating an SPU
project, creating a PPU project, creating the Cell/B.E. simulator, configuring the application
launcher, debugging and doing performance analysis, using simulator consoles,
using the ALF wizard, and setting IDE preferences.
In this tutorial
In this tutorial series, you will: - Get step-by-step instructions on how to create, build, and run PPU- and SPU-
managed make projects.
- Understand how to use the Local Cell Simulator environment.
- Walk through ways of using the static and dynamic performance analysis
tools.
- Discover how to configure and use the C/C++ Cell Target Application launcher
to run and debug your Cell/B.E. applications.
- See a great example usage scenario of the Accelerated Library Framework IDE
wizard (ALF).
Prerequisites
Although this is a fairly entry-level tutorial, it is written for readers with
some experience installing and using IDEs, especially makefiles.
Some past experimentation with the Cell/B.E. SDK version 2.1 is a plus, but not
required. This tutorial assumes only minimal familiarity with the Eclipse IDE.
System requirements
Hardware The following table shows the recommended minimum configuration for each
hardware platform.
Hardware requirements
| System | Recommended minimum configuration |
|---|
| x86 or x86-64 | 2GHz Pentium® 4 processor |
|---|
| PowerPC®
| 64-bit PPC with a clock speed of 1.42 GHz
32-bit PPC platforms not
supported |
|---|
| BladeCenter® QS20 | Revision 31 or greater and minimum firmware level of QA-06.14.0-0F
(7.21) |
|---|
| BladeCenter QS21 | Minimum hardware firmware level of QB-01.08.0-00 |
|---|
Additionally, all systems must have:
- Hard disk space: 5GB (minimum) to install the source package and the
accompanying development tools
- 1GB RAM (minimum) on the host system
Note: If you use the Full System Simulator, the minimum amount of RAM
installed must be twice the amount of simulated memory. For example, to simulate
a system with 512MB of RAM, the host system must have at least 1GB of RAM
installed. Software This tutorial requires Fedora 7, which must be installed before you install the
SDK.
SELinux: The SELinux policy files that are included in the Fedora 7
base distribution prevent spufs from loading
correctly on boot. To install the SDK, you must either turn off SELinux or
update the selinux-policy and
selinux-policy-targeted RPMs to the latest version.
The preferred method is to update the RPMs. To update, type the following
commands as root:
yum update selinux-policy selinux-policy-targeted.
expat: The DaCS for Hybrid-x86 daemon for both X86_64 and the
BladeCenter QS20 and QS21 platforms requires the expat XML parsing library.
Install expat by typing the following command as root:
yum install expat.
SDK utility software: The SDK requires the packages rsync,
sed, TCL, and wget. To install these dependencies, type the following command as
root: yum install rsync sed tcl wget.
Duration
20-60 minutes
Formats html, pdf
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