Guide to Cell/B.E. Programming Documentation
© 2008 Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Version 1.0, August 2008
Page 7 of 16
CBE Programming Handbook
Cell Broadband Engine Public Information and Downloads
877 pages.
Audience
C/C++ and assembly-language programmers interested in developing applications, libraries, middleware, drivers,
compilers, or operating systems for the Cell/B.E.
Content
A general programming user guide and reference for the Cell/B.E., with content for programmers interested in
developing almost any kind of application or system software. It describes all of the Cell/B.E. facilities needed to
develop such programs. It is system-independent; it makes no assumptions about development-tool or operating-
system environments.
Recommended Use
Use this document throughout Cell/B.E. software development. Use it together with the CBE Registers document and
other PPE and SPE reference documents.
Document Sections
The handbook has the following sections:
Sections 1 to 3 (for application and system programmers):
General hardware and programming-environment
overviews of the Cell/B.E., its PPE, and its SPEs.
Sections 4 to 16 (primarily for system programmers):
Additional hardware and programming topics for the
privilege-state (supervisor) programming environment. There are chapters describing the virtual storage
environment, memory and cache management, I/O architecture, resource allocation, PPE interrupts, PPE
multithreading, logical partitions and hypervisors, SPE context switching, the time base and decrementers,
software objects and executables, SPE loading, power and thermal management, and performance
monitoring. Of these, only the decrementers topic is typically needed by application programmers.
Sections 17 to 24 and Appendixes (for application and system programmers):
More problem-state (user)
programming topics, including SPE channels and related memory-mapped I/O (MMIO) interface, SPE events,
DMA transfers and interprocessor communication, shared-storage synchronization, parallel programming,
SIMD programming, relationship between PPE vector/SIMD multimedia extension programming and SPE
programming, and SPE programming tips. The appendices summarize the PPE instruction set and intrinsics,
SPU instruction set and intrinsics, and performance-monitor signals.
Glossary:
The best available glossary for Cell/B.E. terminology.
Recommended Prerequisites
None.
Further Details
See:
Several additional references are given throughout the document itself.
