[erlang-questions] PS3 and Erlang (Re: Google Summer of Code 2008)

[Roger Larsson]

On fredag 29 februari 2008, jm wrote:
> Toby Thain wrote:
> >>  * Organise a list of project ideas that we'd like students to work
> >>    on.
> >
> > One perennial topic is porting Erlang to embedded/tiny systems, and
> > how small the runtime can feasibly be.
>
> Should I mention PS3 and the Cell. 

I have a PS3 myself (with Linux installed). I have been thinking about
how much a PS3 resembles a telephone exchange... And we all know what
language to use for programming those!

You have the SPEs (and Altivec) connected via an exchange and you would
like to make the best use of the resources.

Avoid moving executions from one SPE to another (keep the code in
SPE memory) - but on the same time the work might require being split
to several SPEs to meet deadlines (real time games).
[IBM has a real time ray tracer that dynamically how big part of the
 image is computed by what SPE]

Move the data to the right SPE, but there are rules about how to do this
most efficient using the built in exchange. If data can remain on a SPE
keep it there.

An outline:
* building the work scheduler in Erlang
* data, binary arrays (required by the SPEs and PowerPC Altivec)
* executables, in form of binary objects (SPE, Altivec, or PowerPC executable)
* work descriptors, connecting executables with data
* building simulation in Erlang, create work descriptors depending on events.

Wouldn't that make an interesting summer project!

/RogerL