...
Googling PS3 GCM turns this in the first result:
https://research.ncl.ac.uk/game/mastersdegree/workshops/ps3introductiontogcm/
PSGL is the shading language, not the API.
Does one have to be a partner of Sony to acquire the documentation.
Yes. It's honestly not hard to become a partner these days though.
Also, If anybody has ever used these APIs, what were your impressions of them.
Sony's APIs are very good. I am a fan. Obviously I can't go into detail due to the NDA's though...
PSGL is the shading language, not the API.
PSGL is actually an API, but no one uses it.
The PS3 had two graphics APIs -- GCM was the low-level one, and PSGL was a wrapper around it that tried to make it look more like OpenGL and be easier to use. A helper layer to make it easier to use, but slower.
The shader language is Cg on both.
The PS4 is similar -- it has GNM as it's low-level API, and GNMX as a high-level wrapper, which again trades performance for usability.
The shader language is PSSL on both of these.
The GNM/GNMX docs, like any other console-specific documentation, is not public and only available to registered developers who sign NDA's. Same goes for PSGL and PSSL (PSGL was an incomplete OpenGL implementation for PS3, PSSL is the official shading language for PS4).
Unfortunately I am covered by said NDA's, so I can't really tell you anything about them specifically. I will just say that in general, console API's can be really nice since they're tailored to exactly 1 GPU, and can therefore expose them completely (although this can sometimes make certain things a bit harder, since certain things that are normally abstracted away by PC API's will instead have to be manually managed).
While you cannot access documentation about the PS4's graphics API without signing an NDA, you still can read extremely interesting things about the family of GPUs that are [said to be] used in the PS4.
This article says "PlayStation 4 Rumored to Use AMD Fusion CPU/GPU". This thread claims "The PS4 uses a modified HD 7870".
This Wikipedia page lists the HD 7870 in AMD's "Southern Islands" series.
Well, here is an interesting document about AMD Southern Islands Series Instruction Set Architecture. The first two chapters are a good introduction to that hardware.
You can also find a description of the PM4 packets those GPUs use in Radeon Southern Islands Acceleration, and registers are described in Radeon Southern Islands 3D/Compute Register Reference Guide.
About Fusion systems, this presentation about Memory System On Fusion APUs might be instructive.
Now, most of these suggestions are based on rumors, but they sometimes are close to reality...
In any case, those documents are interesting to skim through if you're into graphics programming.
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