100w ago - Today Cellminer: Bitcoin Miner for the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture (CBEA) was made available via Github for Sony's PS3 entertainment system.

For those curious, this was developed on a PlayStation 3 using Debian GNU / Linux 6.0.1.

Download: Cellminer Auto Installer / GIT

From the ReadMe:

Requirements

Debian Packages [aptitude install ...]

• make
• gcc
• binutils-spu
• ruby1.9.1-dev
• libspe2-dev
- gcc-spu
- binutils
- ruby1.9.1
- libspe2-2

(packages marked - should be included automatically as dependencies of packages marked •)

Ruby Gems [gem1.9.1 install ...]

• net-http-persistent

System

In order to make use of your SPEs under Linux, you must have spufs mounted on /spu. For example:

# mount -t spufs spufs /spu

Or equivalently, ensure /etc/fstab contains a line similar to the following:

spufs /spu spufs defaults 0 0

Building

$ make

Running

$ ./cellminer --help

205w ago - To quote from SKFU's recent find:

"A few days ago the new Phrack Issue had its street date including an article about Hacking the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture.

The author BSDaemon who works for RISE Security used a PlayStation 3 system for his tests and got very interesting information for you; definitely worth reading!"

The article covers topics including: Debugging Cell, Debugging the SPE, Finding/Exploiting Software Vulnerabilities on Cell SPE, Memory Overflows, SPE memory layout, Avoiding Null Bytes and more on the PS3.

Those interested can check it out linked above in full!

242w ago - Some interestng speculation on ps3fanboy about the potential target date of the PS4 and cell processing. To quote:

Perhaps the PS3 was a bit too ahead of its time. The console was almost absurdly expensive when it launched -- and not just for consumers. In spite of an initial $600 price tag, Sony lost hundreds of dollars on every system manufactured.

The combination of Blu-ray drive and Cell processor made the PS3 a bit too bleeding edge, perhaps. A report from respectable Japanese site PC Watch suggests that Sony may be considering a cheaper alternative for the next-generation PS4.

Nintendo found great success (and profitability) with Wii by releasing hardware that was only marginally more powerful than the Gamecube. Sony may mimic that trend by having PS4 hardware based on the same Cell architecture as the PS3. Keeping the same architecture will help developers, many which have only recently come to grips with the complex processes of Sony's proprietary system.

However, one particular note in the report has us quite worried: according to PC Watch, the Sony wants to launch a new system, before the competition -- eyeing a 2011 release. With the PS3 still so relatively young, we'd hate to see Sony raise a white...

257w ago - Bushing has posted a Nintendo Wii Hardware Architecture Diagram recently.

To quote from his page linked above: Inspired by henke37's idea of making a diagram that shows how the different processors on the Wii relate to each other, I took a stab at it. I got a little carried away I guess.

I can't promise everything here is right - there are just too many things we don't know, and even some of the things we do know, we don't all agree on.

So, here's my first attempt at summing it all up...

265w ago - Hello.. today we release a PlayStation 3 Security Architecture PDF document to the public. We still are doing some work on PS3 KeyVault Project, so still not ready yet.

For the PDF.. this is not for newbies sorry. Target Audience: Deep knowledge of CBEA SOC, Sony PlayStation 3 hardware logic, security, encryption/decryption and secure boot dynamics is the minimum to understand the parts of this document.

Thanks to all the stuff of http://www.PS3News.com, without their support this documentation would not be possible, thanks also to Sony for all the nice patents.