Re: [Caml-list] OCalm on Sony PS3 (was Re: More registers in modern day CPUs)

[Mike Hogan <MikeHogan62@gmail.com>]

Xavier Leroy wrote:
> 
> I confirm that OCaml compiles correctly on the PS/3 with YDL.  The
> native-code compiler works fine (in 32-bit mode) provided it's
> configured with  -host powerpc-unknown-linux.  (Autodetection reports
> powerpc64-unknown-linux, even though the default compilation mode on
> this distro is 32-bit; I'll hack the configure script to work around
> this issue.)
> 
Nice -- I'll try the "host powerpc-unknown-linux" option.


Xavier Leroy wrote:
> 
> A more general but extremely difficult approach is two-level
> programming, where the Caml program, running on the PPC core,
> generates programs in a simple data-parallel language which is then
> compiled on the fly to SPU code.  
> 
This is exactly what I would like to do.  There is a Python Extension for
the PS3 SPU's called "CorePy" that can be used to more-or-less directly
generate assembly instructions for the PPC, its associated AltiVec and the
SPUs.  In essence, CorePy makes a class for each particular processor on
your system and this class has processor-specific instructions as methods. 
The extensions take care of the details for loading the code, binding
between the Python interpreter and the assembler that was generated on the
fly etc.


Xavier Leroy wrote:
> 
> Such an approach could also target
> graphics coprocessors (the "GPGPU" approach).  But I have no idea what
> such an intermediate language would look like.
> 
This would actually push the system's abilities up by an order of magnitude
in some cases, but unfortunately the "Other OS" hypervisor on the PS3 bars
access to the GPU.  It's a shame, since the PS3 GPU is supposed to be one of
NVIDIA's hottest chips.
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