Add support for PS3

[mccall]

PowerPC support should arrive after R1, the PS3 could be an ideal target for Haiku due to its multi-threaded architecture, ie. translators and libraries could be optimized to use the Cell, giving the whole OS and applications that use the optimized components a performance boost.

Areas that need looking into are:

• How does the boot process work
• What devices are presented to an OS
• What components of Haiku can be optimized to use the Cell BBE's SPU's
• Is the memory layout to restrictive to make a port whorthwile

Note to anyone reading this - don't get excited - this isn't someone working on a PS3 port. Its not news. Nothing may come out of this.

[wkornewald]

Minor description fixes. Postponed indefinitely.

[mccall]

Boot process:

There are two components OtherOS.self and OtherOS.bld. OtherOS.self is the component that adds itself to the XMB and can be downloaded from Sony #1. 1.60 and later revisions of the PS3 firmware include the option on the XMB by default.

The OtherOS menu option boots otheros.bld that can be stored on a CDROM, DVD, or a compatible memory card. The device has to have the following directory structure on it and uses a FAT32 file system:

<device>/PS3/ <device>/PS3/otheros/ <device>/PS3/otheros/otheros.bld

The OtherOS.bld for Linux is a gzipped image containing a kernel and an initrd. Is we were booting Haiku on the PS3 in the "supported" way, we can ignore the OtherOS.self, and just (Ha! *just*) build a Haiku OtherOS.bld.

Links:

#1 ​http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html

[mccall]

The ps2dev.org team look like they are documenting the hypervisor system calls:

​http://wiki.ps2dev.org/ps3:hypervisor

[kallisti5]

Given that the ps3 slim will no longer have "other OS" support... is this still a want?

[jackburton]

Yeah, I'm tempted to close this as "invalid".

[kallisti5]

given the PS3 fat also no longer has an "other OS" option... this should definitely be closed.

[anevilyak]

Indeed.