This tutorial is written for programmers who are interested in developing applications or libraries for the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell BE). It is not intended for programmers who want to develop device drivers, compilers, or operating systems for the Cell Broadband Engine.
The descriptions and examples in this tutorial are from the Software Development Kit for Multicore Acceleration, Version 3.0. The examples are chosen to highlight the general principals required for Cell Broadband Engine programming, so that an experienced programmer can apply this knowledge to other environments.
The document is intended for system and application programmers who wish to develop Cell Broadband Engine applications.
It is assumed that you are an experienced C/C++ programmer and are familiar with the basic concepts of single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) vector instruction sets, such as the PowerPC ® Architecture™ Vector/SIMD Multimedia Extensions, Intel ® MMX™, SSE, 3DNOW!, or x86-64 instruction sets.
It is also assumed that you have the Software Development Kit (SDK) for Multicore Acceleration, which includes a Cell BE specific, 64-bit PowerPC Linux operating system, SDK code examples, and the IBM Full System Simulator for Cell BE.