Turning PlayStation Into A Supercomputer

The Strategy Page ^ | 12/11/2009 | The Strategy Page

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

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.

[SpaceBar]

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, the news doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme...

Iraq buys 4000 PlayStation 2s in world conquest bid

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

I guess they are going to start putting warning labels on Playstations.

[Captain Beyond]

bump for later read

[ROTB]

>a teraflop of computing power

Just one? A PS3 I thought pulls two for $299 ...

[BobbyT]

Depends on whether they’re talking about single precision or double precision operations...I assume the latter.

Right now a high end quad-core CPU is good for about 70 gigaflops (.07 teraflops) of double precision operations.

A high end GPU, which performs single precision calculations, is good for 900+ gigaflops (almost a teraflop). Way faster, but only good for very simple, repetitive calculations.

[American Constitutionalist]

" I guess they are going to start putting warning labels on Playstations. "

WARNING: THIS PLAYSTATION IN THE WRONG HANDS COULD LITERALLY CAUSE WWIII : KEEP AWAY FROM JIHADIST

[American Constitutionalist]

Some universities have pooled many PS3s together to get the teraflop computing power they are looking for.
Actually, if you own a PS3, you with your PS3 can be joined with other PS3 owners to help look for a cure for cancer.

[WildWeasel]

Cyberdyne Systems Model 101

[Oshkalaboomboom]

Actually, if you own a PS3, you with your PS3 can be joined with other PS3 owners to help look for a cure for cancer.

That is Folding@Home which is included on the PS3's install disk. FR has a folding team.

[cavador]

I have an Xbox360,and I got a big surprise when I checked out the specs of these units.It's got twice the graphics power of my top end pc.Any game I put on it updates the framerate far quicker than the same game on a pc.With the pc the lag in the framerate is quite noticable. I have added a maxshooter device to the xbox.(Which allows a mouse and keyboard to be fitted.) I'm still narky about the network card being more than Au $140.00.I will just have to wait till it comes down in price before I can turn it into a full computer.(I'm almost there except for networking.)

[MarkL]

I'm still narky about the network card being more than Au $140.00.I will just have to wait till it comes down in price before I can turn it into a full computer.(I'm almost there except for networking.)

Aw, come on... Spring for it... You know you want to get networked...

Mark

[MarkL]

It is amazing just how much things have changed with the incredible increases in technology. The idea isn't new. In fact, it was commercially available in the early 1980s using the INMOS Transputer. Anyone who's familiar with Happaugue's video capture boards knows the company that was best known for designing and selling the parallel computing Transputers. Many of the concepts pioneered for that are still in use today with parallel processing, clustering, and in supercomputers today.

Mark

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Comment from arodrig6 on the original article makes this precise point...

- Floating Point. The CELL processor used in the PS3 has good single precision (32-bit) floating point performance, but is not very good at the double precision FP used in most scientific/engineering codes. This is why the CELL (The PowerXCELL 8i) processor used in the RoadRunner machine is uses a different design than the PS3 CELL. It was redesigned to perform double precision floating point more quickly (they also changed the memory system to use DDR memory instead of XDR and increase capacity).

[2harddrive]

Pretty soon we will read that Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs are doing nuclear weapons design and explosion simulations on the Playstation 3!

[tired1]

I think that’s the goal.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

LOL