The PS3 takes the cape of a supercomputer once more

by Nick Doerr { Jan 17th 2008 at 5:00PM }

Like Clark Kent, it's time again for the PS3 to discard its nerd-goggles and rip that button-down shirt off to reveal what lies beneath: a superhero. Or a supercomputer, if you felt the comparison went a bit far. A professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Guarav Khanna, bought eight PS3's and clustered them together. Using Linux, he and his colleagues are enjoying some heavy-duty scientific research thanks to their newfound supercomputer.

Khanna offers up the notion the supercomputer could be used outside of scientific research. See, most supercomputers have intense calculations queued up and answers can take a day or two to get back to researchers. If every school had a PS3, or this chain-gang of PS3's as it were, that problem would go away. It could also double as a computer running Linux allowing kids to do work and surf the web. Obviously. Now, PS3, go get your glasses and shirt back on, because we want to play some Folklore.

[via PlayStation Forums]

Tags: supercomputer

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Lars @ Jan 17th 2008 5:04PM

Dang, these guys rock, I can't even get Ubuntu running a good screen resolution. Of course I haven't messed with it much though. Too many good games came out. Still working on Folklore, and I hope to get back to some online competition after that ala Warhawk and EoJ.

viet @ Jan 17th 2008 5:06PM

ps3 to the rescue!

Supino @ Jan 17th 2008 5:23PM

This will just lower the attachrate!! i kid i kid

Akamaru @ Jan 17th 2008 5:25PM

Hey Nick I love your writing. Your post are always filled with a pretty decent helping of win.

The PS3 is really proving those "supercomputer" claims that Kutaragi would rave about. Honestly I'm surprised considering the hype the PS2's processor (Emotion Engine, anyone?) got that it never lived up to.

gregory mitchell @ Jan 17th 2008 5:34PM

yea I remember, what ever happened to the "toy story" graphics!!

Popfrogs @ Jan 17th 2008 5:38PM

Ratchet and Clank buries Toy Story.

Haiddasalami @ Jan 17th 2008 7:20PM

Ratchet and Clank meets the graphics of Toy Story.

Vincent @ Jan 17th 2008 5:41PM

You forgot to mention the price to rent a supercomputer, which is
really really high. That's another advantage of using a chain-PS3.

If one PS3 is pure awesome, I can only imagine a chain of 8 PS3 together :D

JayD-1K @ Jan 17th 2008 5:41PM

i thought God of War 2 looked prety dame good! NOW, if Sony could have these people to talk/work with game devs to bring out even more power of the PS3........just imagine what they could do with the games!!!

Ruben @ Jan 17th 2008 5:56PM

Sorry off topic but who here dreams of the release of the sims 3 on ps3 that will not be a crappy port of pc but the entire thing with an added story mode, keyboard and mouse support and mod support. A thousand more items and expressions than the pc version (bluray no?) And the expansion packs for pc can also be released for ps3 on the psn, you download them install them, then delete the installer, and if something happens you can download it again for free. Awesome no?
http://foro.capitalsim.net/files/sims3fake2_569.jpg
Now go tell EA!!!

Robert M Wright @ Jan 17th 2008 6:16PM

I also like the news of something different than the MSN or Apple run around. Can't kick about the price, when compared with Alien Products

Phil @ Jan 17th 2008 6:47PM

Ubuntu in Gnome runs dog slow on a PS3 at 1080p, I can see how CELL optimized cluster processing software could be useful- but using the PS3 as a linux desktop is painful.

Guess I should be using a lightweight desktop environment... or none at all for extra l33tness!

Laurens Holst @ Jan 17th 2008 7:21PM

I think from now on I’ll just refer to ‘my PS3’ as ‘my supercomputer’ instead. Should be fun ;p.

~Grauw

Tim Parsons @ Jan 17th 2008 8:17PM

damn that pic looks PRETTY!! ~drools~ LOL

but my one suits my needs quite well LOL

John @ Jan 17th 2008 8:46PM

Here's what I'm thinking: by 2012, the size of ps3 components has come down tremendously. The ps4 is just 8 ps3's strung together, like here, only fitting in a humbler space.

andiputra7 @ Jan 17th 2008 11:19PM

So is it possible to combine like 2-3 PS3 and used that to play like Crysis in max resolution?

secret @ Jan 18th 2008 2:48AM

PS3: The Cinderella story

The media has been trying to ram the glass shoe onto the xbox360, but the shoe will only fit on the PS3...

adamantypants @ Jan 18th 2008 3:10AM

Where's my Jesus riding a dinosaur pic at...

Hate to break it to everybody, but there have been PS3 clusters exactly like this for over a year. When YDL 5.0 went live for download/purchase, Terrasoft solutions (home of YDL) began selling PS3 clusters with Linux pre-installed for your supercomputing needs.

Alex @ Jan 18th 2008 10:07AM

COOL. Now if only it would take the cape as a gaming console it would be worth buying!

Aalaap @ Jan 18th 2008 11:08AM

This happened four months ago! http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/10/ps3_supercomputer

randkay @ Jan 19th 2008 12:14PM

Sony should ring out Special Edition PS3's with 2 gigs of ram. I think the biggest downfall of running something like Linux on a PS3 is the ram. Video Ram is ok but there is not enough system ram. I wonder how hard something like that would be to implement now???