The Cell Broadband Engine (BE) architecture is a 9-core heterogeneous
processor. It is a new and versatile architecture that is well suited
for a variety of applications including digital media, entertainment,
communications, medical imaging, security and surveillance, and HPC
workloads. The same Cell BE processor that powers IBM Cell blade
servers is also available for a fraction of the cost in Sony
PLAYSTATION3 (PS3) gaming consoles.  The PS3 is not just a gaming
console however because it is readily possible to install other
operating systems and boot the PS3 into a programmable environment
using popular Linux distributions. Thus a PS3 provides a practical
vehicle for academic and research endeavors that focus on parallel
architectures and parallel programming. This tutorial demonstrates the
ease of leveraging PS3 consoles as low-cost and high-performance
platforms for parallel execution. The tutorial provides a brief
technical overview of the Cell architecture, and focuses on
programming models and programming patterns that facilitate the
development of efficient applications for the Cell BE.

Outline:
- Brief overview of Cell architecture
- Tapping the power of the PS3 for research and education
- Efficient and practical parallel programming practices for Cell and
  multicores
- StreamIt as a natural stream programming paradigm for parallel
  processing on multicores

Target Audience:
- Researchers and Educators interested in challenges related to
  parallel processing
- Anyone interested in StreamIt, stream computing, or learning to
  program the Cell processor