Bye bye CELL

Well, I guess that's really the last nail in the coffin for CELL.

Sony's just announced that the next firmware `upgrade' for the PS3 will drop Linux support (and it's so important, that's all it will do). This is very, very disappointing. They blame it on crackers or 'security', but it's obvious it is just a cost cutting exercise. Sony have been hurting financially for a while now, and the razor gang is out with their daggers looking for savings.

After the `ps3 slim' dropping support (due supposedly to lack of resources to write the hypervisor drivers), and then IBM dropping CELL for HPC ... I guess the writing was on the wall. I'm glad I gave up development on CELL BE some time ago and got hold of a beagleboard instead - overall it's been a more satisfying experience if only because things are simpler. The whole CELL thing was just a costly mistake for all by the looks of it - being a bit ahead of it's time lead to a few limitations that people couldn't cope with.

Even though I rarely use it anymore, the whole thing plainly stinks - this is not a device I rent, I bought it. And for them to come into my home and remove functionality (advertised on the box no less) from a device that I paid for in full (well over-paid) should simply be illegal, if it isn't already.

I can't even log onto the Sony blog to fruitlessly whine about it because they've changed the login system to some horrid mess that takes ages to load and only shows blank pages (I bet it works on ie6 though, if the comments in the page are anything to go by). Well if they don't want me as a customer it isn't really my loss is it?

Time to remove CELL BE from the subtitle of this page at least; not that it has had much point in being there for quite some time.