The Cell Broadband Processor is a hard to understandable enigma to programmers who have worked in the standard PC environment for a long time. With the hints from the following papers and the introduction of the IBM XL C/C++ compiler in 2007 it is now much easier to learn and program the Cell.
1st: Introduction to the XL C/C++ compiler for Linux and the Cell
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/3/897/ENUS207-253/index.html
2nd: Using advanced compiler technology to exploit the performance of the Cell Broadband Engine architecture
(that is to say read this for great hints (instruction buffering and branch hint commands))
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/sj/451/eichenberger.html
3rd: A tutorial in several parts "compiling for the cell"
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/pa-dw-pa-cbecompile1-i.html
4th: The Cell Project
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/cell/cell_programming.html
http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/publications.html
5th and final: CellSs: Making it easier to program the Cell Broadband Engine processor
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/rd/515/perez.html
Updates:
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*** for those who want to know about iRT *****
*** and where to download it *****
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http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/irt
has a download link for the iRT client and examples
