PS3 Hardware Acceleration for RSX GPU in OtherOS++ (PS3 Linux)

Updates about this project can be seen here

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In 2018 we have already seen so much progress on the PlayStation 3 with a variety of new exploits and hacks that have opened many new avenues for people to join the homebrew community. However, the community developer's still are not done making new breakthroughs on the platform. One roadblock has remained on the PS3 and that was Hardware Acceleration on the NVIDIA RSX GPU, while we have seen the PS Vita / PSTV get HW Acceleration recently and how its has helped many projects on the platform. the PPC / CELL environment of the PS3 offers a challenging adventure with the architecture that the PS3 is built on, that sadly not many have been able to undertake and solve over the years, however that may of just changed.......​

Developer RenéRebe has made some great progress on the PS3 in OtherOS++ (PS3 Linux), He produced a video on YouTube detailing the technical side of this breakthrough for PS3 Linux (OtherOS++) that Hopefully (my personal hope) can benefit GameOS one day as well so that we can improve the overall homebrew landscape as well like perhaps finally the inclusion of an N64 emulator(?) or Improved 3d emulation in general, we know the hardware (if emu contains a PPC port) can do it, point to the internal emulators of PS2 / PSP / PS1 emulation to gauge the capabilities of emulation on the HW.
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-STLcardsWS​

via Dev's YouTube

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  PS3/Linux NVidia RSX HW Acceleration​
  
  
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  My summary of three nights of debugging to get PS3/Linux hardware accelerated X working again. It is finally up and running; in OtherOS++ with full access to the NVdia RSX GPU​
  
  
  Update: Also the developer posted this video a few days prior to the one above​
  
  
  Running PS3 PPC64 Linux in GameOS w/ FULL ACCESS RIGHTS!
  

  The first steps on the way to make PS3 Linux great again, and run it with full GameOS rights! ​

Checkout the developer's YouTube Channel for other great video's :
Thanks @gercapo for the Alert​

 

Wooooho, its happening ?

 

I been watching some videos in his youtube channel and this is really promising
In short, he started rewriting the RSX driver (not sure which one though) and he got acceleration working, but he made a pause in his work because he was at a point where is needed to cleanup all the code tweaks and get some chunks of code from nvidia sources and he also wanted to spend some time reading and understanding how the PS3 RSX works in detail (to have a better overview of which road to take when writing a public version of the driver)

That happened a couple of months ago, and if you look at his youtube channel you are going to realize he is very busy doing other things
His youtube channel is awesome, lol, he is very experienced in hardware, in software, in linux kernel development, he even has a "thing" named T2 (used to build linux distros like puppy, i love this one btw, i always though a puppy working in PS3 could be nice)

No doubt... it looks he is skilled enought to make the RSX accelerated driver... lets hope he keeps the interest in it

Keep an eye at this links, eventually he could upload something new related with PS3
https://twitter.com/renebln
https://rene.rebe.de/
https://www.youtube.com/user/renerebe/videos

 

Yeah, very interesting channel, Maybe an article about him and the driver progress would be good on here, get him some subscribers and support. Even my shitty youtube channel where I never said a word has more subscribers and he is at it since 2008, just needs some publicity and it might motivate him even more.

I see he said this only 2 weeks ago too on another video. So still active.

we are running as gameos now, will full —like games— RSX access

 

Thats exactly what i was thinking, we need to show him our support
Yesterday i added his videos and links to wiki http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Talk:PS3_GPU_Driver
But we need moar... i was about to tell to @STLcards that we need an article in the forum frontpage about this

At this point of the PS3 scene lifetime... it looks like he is the only one (in the world ? lol) that can complete the work


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And btw... im guessing after having acceleration working... there is going to be still a long road to have acceleration working in gameOS
But if done... i guess is going to be posible to have vulkan working in retroarch... and vulkan = n64 emu working and some more

 

Also I see him saying he is having trouble with finding old files, do you know anyone who might have stuff like that? Someone must have a copies, I was just going through one of my old drives and I have tonnes of stuff from 2010, payloads, Rebug 3.41 betas etc. Nothing like that though.

 

Well, thats one of the doubts i had, not sure what he is using as a base... but anyway i guess is built on top of the work from glevand/graf so was the repositories of gitbrew, but later glevand submitted his drivers and stuff to the official linux kernel, and the most experimental work made by glevand was made for freeBSD
I never was much into all that so im not sure what happened with all that files, maybe are this ones
│ ├── ps3freebsd-ps3gpu-master.tar.gz
│ ├── ps3freebsd-ps3gpu_test-master.tar.gz
http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Gitorious
http://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Gitbrew

 

n64 emu working

That would be awesome, i hope n64 emulation will be possible on the ps3 one day

 

This has always been missing for PS3, I see a bright future for PS3 with graphics acceleration if he makes his work knows many things will be possible.

 

This has always been missing for PS3, I see a bright future for PS3 with graphics acceleration if he makes his work knows many things will be possible.

Steam & games comes to my mind.
Though the ps3s hardware is way older then my PC.. But still, it would be nice

 

Look at this, he is involved with this "T2 building enviroment" i was talking about
http://t2sde.org/hardware/console/Sony/PS3/

Not sure if is involved directly or indirectly because i found that link yesterday while rushing google looking for info about his work... maybe is not and i clicked in it instantly because i knew about T2 before so it called my attention inmediatly
T2 is used (or was used, not sure if they has moved to other build enviroment) to make linux distros like this one:
http://puppylinux.com/

Are very small and very efficient (thanks to the T2), and i guess is posible to make one specific for PS3
Something like that (and with video acceleration) should beat in performance any other linux running in PS3 by a lot
Ok... im dreaming... but it looks like this guy can do it

 

Steam & games comes to my mind.
Though the ps3s hardware is way older then my PC.. But still, it would be nice

A real fall of the jaw would cause the possibility louching Dolphin or nullDC oh dreaming Shenmue, PS3 would be a mega multimedia harvester and a new leader for console emulators.

 

Yes !, i just realized he is the "primary developer" for powerPC and powerPC64 in the T2 project, im completly hyped now
http://t2sde.org/architectures/powerpc/
http://t2sde.org/architectures/powerpc64/

 

WoW this is great news

@gercapo
I edited your post for news reasons and promoted this thread . Thanks for the alert.
This was released back in late jan but alot was going on in the scene and looks to of been overlooked but this is a legit person so thanks for make everyone aware .

 

So can i finally can use the Cell and the RSX for some Design editing!? Because my Xeon workstation its kicking the bucket

Great job non the less

 

So, what does this mean? I'm sorry if it's a noob question.

 

So, what does this mean? I'm sorry if it's a noob question.

Answer for noob, it means that the majority of eg advanced emulators require support for 3D acceleration, large profits in this connection. Option to rewrite emulators from other palformorms for ps3 gameos. One of the examples. A large research field, e.g. for full PSP compatibility, rewriting the PPSSPP emulator. Support for the driver for RSX beautiful case, RSX is a comparable power to the Nvidia 7800GTX on which you can emulate up to the 6th generation of consoles. It would not surprise me to launch Wii on PS3 :P

 

this is one area i never got to explore too much yet. great work! this will be exciting to see what it can provide in the future

 

Wow, these are very interesting... bless great developers. I'm thrilled.

 

Answer for noob, it means that the majority of eg advanced emulators require support for 3D acceleration, large profits in this connection. Option to rewrite emulators from other palformorms for ps3 gameos. One of the examples. A large research field, e.g. for full PSP compatibility, rewriting the PPSSPP emulator. Support for the driver for RSX beautiful case, RSX is a comparable power to the Nvidia 7800GTX on which you can emulate up to the 6th generation of consoles. It would not surprise me to launch Wii on PS3 :P

That sounds insanely awesome, though, I would only use it for PSP emulation...

I hope we see a release soon :0