I don't know the details of CUDA, so this may not be a good comparison, but there were efforts to abstract Cell's weirdness. It wasn't for the PS3, but for supercomputers. In particular the Roadrunner which had both Operteron and Cell processors. It was called CellFS and was based on the 9p protocol from Plan 9. It says there was 10-15% overhead, which may not have worked for PS3 games.

https://fmt.ewi.utwente.nl/media/59.pdf

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/546-mirtc...

http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/IWP9/2007/11.highperf.lucho.pdf