In August, 2006 I attended the Girvan Workshop for the Cell Broadband Engine and it's an experience I'll never forget. For two solid days, IBM engineers explained the processor's architecture, tools and the many software libraries available for building Cell applications.

I was stunned, not only by the processor's extraordinary capabilities, but also by how much there was to learn: spulets and CESOF files, Altivec and Single instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) math, debuggers and simulators. I did my best to comprehend it all, but most of the material flew over my head in a fierce whoosh.

When Sony released the Playstation 3, I grabbed the first console off the shelf and ran home for a more thorough investigation. It was daunting at first. Then, as now, IBM's Software Development Kit provided a vast number of documents that covered three essential subjects: development tools, software libraries and the processor itself, The docs were helpful, but there was no overlap or coordination between them. This is a serious problem because any practical Cell developer needs to understand these subjects an an integrated whole.

It took time before the whooshing sound dissipated, but when it did, I genuinely understood how to program the Cell's PowerPC Processor Unit (PPU) and Synergistic Processor Units.

It wasn't that hard, really " just regular C/C++ and a set of communications mechanisms. Yet the blogs and discussion groups disagreed: to them Cell programming was much too complex for normal developers to understand. However, they hadn't really given the Cell a chance; they saw the disjointed pieces, but not how they fit together.

Programming the Cell Processor is my best attempt to reduce the whoosh associated with Cell development. My goal is to tie together the Cell's tools, architecture and libraries in a straightforward progression that appeals to intuition. And I've included many code examples so that you can follow the material in a hands-on fashion. To download the examples, go to http://informit.com/title.

Editor's Note: Reproduced by permission of the book's publisher, Pearson Education, Inc., this series of five articles describes how developers can use a collection of open source GCC development tools, the Linux operating system and the Eclipse IDE to do development on the Cell multicore architecture. Part 1 starts on the next page, and describes the basics of the Cell Processor architecture, introducing the developer briefly to the Cell Software Development Kit. Part 2 is on Building Applications for the Cell processor; Part 3 covers debugging the Cell processor; Part 4 covers simulating applications and Part 5 is about the Cell SDK IDE, including Eclipse and the C/C++ development tooling as well as detailing how to manage an SPU project with the Cell IDE.