Skip to Content
Programming the Cell Processor: For Games, Graphics, and Computation
book

Programming the Cell Processor: For Games, Graphics, and Computation

by Matthew Scarpino
October 2008
Intermediate to advanced
744 pages
18h 21m
English
Pearson
Content preview from Programming the Cell Processor: For Games, Graphics, and Computation

11. SIMD Programming on the SPU

Like many developers, I didn’t learn SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) coding until after college. And like many SIMD programmers, I quickly became an intolerable snob. “Your code only processes one scalar per cycle?” I’d ask. “You only perform one comparison with each loop iteration?” I came to look down upon scalar coders and wondered if they needed their fingers to count to ten.

Now that I’ve learned the Cell, I’ve become worse. “You mean your code only runs on one processing unit and it only has one pipeline?” Single-core coders defend themselves with statements like “Speed isn’t everything,” but compared to me, they might as well be turning beads on an abacus.

This goal of this chapter is to give you ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics

GPU Gems: Programming Techniques, Tips and Tricks for Real-Time Graphics

Randima Fernando
OpenGL – Build high performance graphics

OpenGL – Build high performance graphics

Muhammad Mobeen Movania, David Wolff, Raymond C. H. Lo, William C. Y. Lo
Linux® Kernel Primer, The: A Top-Down Approach for x86 and PowerPC Architectures

Linux® Kernel Primer, The: A Top-Down Approach for x86 and PowerPC Architectures

Claudia Salzberg Rodriguez, Gordon Fischer, Steven Smolski

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780137156115Purchase book