Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) Software Development Kit (SDK)
The IBM Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell BE) SDK, Version 2.0, is a complete software development environment, including Linux kernel for Cell BE blades, Linux support libraries, tool chains, system simulator, source code for libraries and samples, and a new, fully-integrated installation.
Updated December 15, 2006: Version 2.0 contains a number of significant enhancements over previous versions and completely replaces those versions. These enhancements include the following:
* Linux kernel upgraded to 2.6.18; performance enhancements added; support added for a combined PPU and SPU Kernel debugger
* GNU GCC tools upgraded to Version 4.1.1 and XLC Compiler to Version 0.8.1
* SPU debugger improved and support added for a combined Power Processing Unit (PPU) and Synergistic Processing Unit (SPU) debugger
* addition of programming model frameworks, including SPU code overlays, an accelerator framework for offloading work to SPUs, and software managed cache
* addition of SIMD Math library for PPU and SPU; revamping of LibC library for SPU; addition of MASS and MASS/V libraries for PPU
* simulator support for performance modeling of memory subsystem components and interactions
* addition of Cell BE-specific, post-link code optimization tool
* addition of Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) support for building, compiling, and debugging Cell BE applications. The IDE uses the underlying SDK tools, including compilers, debugger, and system simulator.
An update to Version 1.1 (September 29, 2006) included improved system simulator support that is faster on 64-bit platforms (PowerPC 64 and X86 64) and provided the ability to simulate a Cell BE SMP configuration as used on the IBM BladeCenter® QS20. Version 1.1 (published July 14, 2006) contained a number of significant enhancements over Versions 1.0 and 1.0.1 and completely replaced those previous SDKs.