Saturday, December 20, 2008

Scientists Use Playstations to Create Supercomputer

Scientists use PlayStations to create supercomputer.

"Frustrated with the cost of renting time on supercomputers, which he said can cost as much as $5,000 to run a 5,000-hour simulation, Khanna decided to set up his own computer cluster using PS3s, which had both a powerful processor developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba, but also an open platform that allows different system software to run on it. PlayStation 3 systems retail for about $400 Cdn."

"Massachusetts Dartmouth computer scientist Chris Poulin, who co-wrote the instructional manual with Khanna, wouldn't reveal the number of flops the system can achieve, but said anecdotally the cluster has allowed him to run simulations in hours that used to take days on a powerful server computer."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a clever application of grant funds to me. Anyone doubt they are playing fallout, or whatever the hot new game is in between those "simulations"?

Of course if they are studying game theory...