MIT Completes First Course Devoted to PlayStation Tech

  • By Paul McCloskey
  • 04/24/07
MIT last week completed what claims is the first course in the United States devoted to the capabilities of the Cell Broadband Engine or Cell/B.E., the chip that powers the Sony PlayStation3 entertainment platform.

The course, partially funded by Sony, IBM, and Toshiba, was a four-week "independent activities period" course in which students designed projects to run on PS3 system using open standards software and parallel programming methods. It was taught by Saman Amarasinghe, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Rodric Rabbah of IBM.

The student team with the best project--a 3D version of the classic "pong" video game--presented their work at the Game Developer Conference in March.

"The fact that students--with no background in parallel programming or the Cell/B.E.--were able to get their projects done from scratch in just about one month largely goes to show the capability and determination of our students, coupled with the availability of a robust toolchain for Cell/B.E. development," said Amarasinghe.

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About the Author

Paul McCloskey is contributing editor of Syllabus.

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