I have written quite a bit of SPE code. The primary issue is that the SPE processor could only read/write to 256kB localized memory (without doing a DMA). So literally object orientated code doesnt even work (because of VTables). The c/c++ model is not designed for this type of architecture. Yes there were also limitations like vector only registers and memory alignment but the biggest issue was the local memory.
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I have written quite a bit of SPE code. The primary issue is that the SPE processor could only read/write to 256kB localized memory (without doing a DMA). So literally object orientated code doesnt even work (because of VTables). The c/c++ model is not designed for this type of architecture. Yes there were also limitations like vector only registers and memory alignment but the biggest issue was the local memory.
Yep the SPU you end up spending so much time managing memory.
No cache they are just dumb processors. I find it funny they thought they can take ps2 vu0/vu1 and make it a processor.