[GRLUG] Linux on the PS3

[Ben DeMott]

The good news is Tyan Dual Processor core2 platforms have never been cheaper
and the new Intel processors are on there way which will drive the current
cost of a Quad core processor down even further.

8 cores should serve any beef box well!

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Olding, Jim <JOlding at gts.gaineycorp.com>wrote:

> ---
> Second, mplayer is slow on the PS3.  I wanted to try Linux on the PS3 as
> a cheaper alternative to buying a box beefy enough to transcode videos
> on the fly.  No dice.  Checking /proc/cpuinfo revealed two 3GHz PPC
> processors with Altivec support, which should make it more than a match
> for my x86_64 Ubuntu install on my laptop (a dual-core Intel T2370
> running at 1.73GHz).  At least, I thought it would.  I tried two
> Nostromo Divx 5 AMVs (HypnoStrobe and HypnoStar) and an h264 AMV
> (Woolongs for Nothing), and they both stuttered terribly.
> ---
>
> Sony unfortunately doesn't allow direct access to the video hardware
> under Linux.  Everything runs under a hypervisor, so all you get is a
> non-accelerated framebuffer device for X with no video overlay or
> scaling support.
>
> However, they do allow control of the SPE coprocessors.  I don't have
> the links in front of me right now, but there is a custom build of
> Mplayer that is linked against libspe, which allows for color decoding
> and video scaling in hardware.  It worked fairly well for me, though it
> did seem to make X a bit unstable.  I was able to watch 480p H.264
> encodes without issue, though 720p was still pushing it.
>
> Another option I've found to speed up Linux on PS3 was to create a swap
> partition on a flash drive, and set that as a higher priority swap than
> the disk swap.
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