Programming the IBM Cell Baseband Engine

The IBM Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) promises high performance at low power using multiple powerful cores connected with a high-speed interconnect. While effective, this architecture raises parallel programming issues that this two-part feature will address.

Here, in Part 1, we will start with an overview of the Cell BE architecture, continue with the basics of threads and how they're used, specifically with respect to single-threaded sequential programming and multi-threaded programming.

In Part II we will look at different programming techniques and discuss their relative performance on the Cell BE.

To view Part 1, click here.

About the author

T. Shakthi Pradeep, tech lead for software at Dexcel Electronic Designs, Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore, India.