Slim's more of a Windows guy anyway.
Posted on 12/13/2009 10:31:15 PM PST by myknowledge
The military is a major user of supercomputers (the fastest computers on the planet). These machines were first developed, as were the first computers, for military applications. These ultra-powerful computers are used for code breaking, and to help design weapons (including nukes) and equipment (especially electronics). The military is also needs lots of computing power for data mining (pulling useful information, about the enemy, from ever larger masses of information.)
Because there's never enough money to buy all the super-computers (which are super expensive) needed, military researchers have come up with ways to do it cheaper. A decade ago, it was military researchers who figured out how to use of GPUs (Graphic Processing Units, from high end graphic cards) for non-graphic computing. GPUs do something similar to what supercomputers do (lots of math calculations of a fairly simple type), and eventually the manufacturers of GPUs realized that there was a commercial (not just military) demand for GPUs serving as supercomputers.
Three years ago, the Tesla supercomputer add-on for PCs appeared on the market. This was basically an Nvidia graphics board tweaked to act like a supercomputer, rather than a device that put 3-D, photo-realistic game graphics on your computer screen. The latest version of this system will give you a teraflop of computing power for $10,000.
The Cell Processor on the PlayStation 3 (PS 3) is also a GPU, and that GPU alone was used to built several of the fastest supercomputers on the planet. But military researchers were quick to note that some versions of the PS 3 could be tweaked to run Linux, and the software required to produce supercomputer results from the PS 3s Cell processor. Since the PS 3 is sold below cost (so buyers will purchase lots of very profitable games), the U.S. military has bought thousands of PS 3s and used them as inexpensive supercomputers.
Slim's more of a Windows guy anyway.
The first PS3 versions (the ones with the first body style) come included with the ability to run Linux. It's right there in the menu to install another OS, no hacking required. Unfortunately, Sony removed that ability in the new lower-power slim version, supposedly to lower cost.
Variations of the chip itself are available to purchase though. You can get the PS3's Cell processor in an IBM blade server, and the #1 Roadrunner supercomputer is built out of Opterons and a version of the Cell with double-precision SIMD units.
The PS3 runs Linux under a hypervisor, and like any game it only has access to six of the seven SPEs plus the main PowerPC unit. Yes, RSX access is still restricted.
The Folding@Home people explained it best. A GPU can do a small subset of jobs, but it can do them very fast. A CPU can do any job, but not so fast. The Cell processor lies in the middle in terms of performance and what it can do. Technically, the Cell in the PS3 can do anything since it also has a PowerPC core, but it gets its supercomputing speed from the more limited SPEs.
Hmmm...and to think that I was proud of myself for hooking my PS3 up to my WiFi and getting instant Netflix downloads. Everything’s relative...
LOL!
I don’t know what I find more funny, the “Favorite Farm Animals” icon, or the “Adobe Paint By Numbers” program minimized in the toolbar. ;)
What you can’t see is “Virtual Spitoon” in the games folder.
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