Erlang on "Cell" Architectures

[Thomas Lindgren]

--- Dominique de Waleffe <domi@REDACTED> wrote:
> But then how would you program those? Assembly?
> When more documentation is available (*) it may be
> possible to devise a 
> ?simple? DSL which can be easily transformed into
> instructions for those 
> units.

If we take the PS2 vector units as inspiration, then
assembly or a DSL seems just about right for
programming those. Erlang is not a very good fit :-)

> Could it be possible to devise a way of sending RPC
> like messages 
> (implemented via a some low level driver) to the
> cells that would 
> execute the provided code, along with the provided
> data?

That would (probably) be where I would start. There
are multiple levels: distributed Erlang between "main"
processors, some nice way of feeding APUlets to the
vector units, and/or some way of controlling the DMA
unit.

Another option, which I considered for some time for
my dear old PS2, was to write a domain-specific
language for the whole thing. In my case, an
Erlang-inspired one, natch :-)

Best,
Thomas



		
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