[ydl-gen] Java and SPUs

[jmzorko at mac.com]

Paulo,

> If you really want to explore the SPUs just use C/C++.
>
> For each situation just use the right tool.

While I generally agree with this (and other things that solve the  
"if all you have is a hammer ..." problem), I can see Randy's point.   
I'm not much into Java (i'm more of a C / C++ person), but I was  
asked about the feasibility of porting our app (which currently runs  
on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX) to the PS3, and after realizing that  
large, large pieces of it would have to be completely rewritten to  
properly take advantage of the processing power available on the  
Cell, I pretty much came to the conclusion that it's not feasible at  
this point.  99% of our code is cross-platform, but 20-30% (or more)  
would need to be PS3-specific, which makes the project as a whole  
harder to maintain, harder to justify to management, etc.

So, i'm all for C / C++ compilers, JVMs and other higher-level tools  
that do the auto-parallelism, auto-SIMD stuff.  The Cell is amazing,  
and while I personally love being a low-level developer, multiple- 
platform support without doing the least-common-denominator thing  
demands smarter tools.  I'm hopeful that compilers, JVMs, etc. will  
grow in this regard.

Regards,

John

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