Ubuntu

PS3 SPE's Used

Asked by mavsman4457

How many SPE's does Ubuntu 7.04 use on PS3 and would the only way of moving that up be if Sony allowed it?

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Jurjen Stellingwerff
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Best Jurjen Stellingwerff (jurjen-stwerff) said : 		#1

Normally only 1 because the different SPE don't act like a normal mutliprocessor system.
You can write software that uses other SPE's but I don't think there are many projects inside Ubuntu that use those. Perhaps some scientific software does this already.
The maximum is 7 because the PS3 system reserves one SPE of the 8 onboard SPE's.

This is from the top of my head from a little research I did some months ago.

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mavsman4457 (bdsport445) said : 		#2

So all 7 SPEs CAN be used but most of them are not
used?
--- <email address hidden>
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Your question #6206 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/6206
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Jurjen Stellingwerff proposed the following answer:
> Normally only 1 because the different SPE don't act
 like a normal mutliproc
> essor system.
> You can write software that uses other SPE's but I
 don't think there are ma
> ny projects inside Ubuntu that use those. Perhaps
 some scientific software
> does this already.
> The maximum is 7 because the PS3 system reserves one
 SPE of the 8 onboard S
> PE's.
>
> This is from the top of my head from a little
 research I did some months
> ago.
>
>
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mavsman4457 (bdsport445) said : 		#3

Thanks Jurjen Stellingwerff, that solved my question.

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neopickaze (danroddis) said : 		#4

Jurjen Stellingwerff's answer is slightly misleading. The cells does have 8 SPE's however, one of them is disabled in the factory to improve yields. So for every processor where 1 SPE isn't working, the CELL is still a viable CPU, the ones where all 8 work, 1 is disabled so that all PS3's have the same available SPE's to developers.

So the Cell in PS3 has 7 SPE's, and one of which is dedicated to the OS and Security features, so 6 are available for developers.