Researchers turn PS3 into supercomputer.

I found this earlier today and thought it was pretty cool, From what i can tell they used the Chips out of the Playstation 3 to build super computers which has enabled them to Model Pharmacutical molecules, and even Black Holes.And the Wii being used to make medical advances.

Please visit the link.

What amazes me more is someone comes up with a plan to do this with a PS3, My Daughter has one all i will be able to do from now on is wonder what i can make if i add bits from Barbie.

Quote from uk.news.yahoo.com...

University of Massachusetts astrophysicist Gaurav Khanna has strung together 16 PS consoles to simulate gravity waves that occur when two black holes collide, the British magazine says.

Another innovation is a graphics processor made by NVIDIA that boosts gaming-image quality in personal computers.

And as for the Wii that is just incredible, someone will always find a way?? Does anyone else agree? Where do you think this kind of initiative will take us

I don't think this topic should be in 'Area 51 and other Facilities'...

I read the article and it seems really interesting but I still cant tell if they are actually physically modifying a PS3 into a Supercomputer or if they are talking about networking them and using it in a similar fashion as Folding@home etc...

The part I found most interesting was this...

Another innovation is a graphics processor made by NVIDIA that boosts gaming-image quality in personal computers.

By using the C programming language to run the chip, University of Illinois chemist Todd Martinez found he could run calculations 130 times faster than on an ordinary PC.

Again, are they talking about boosting the efficiency of the GPU using C or so that everyone can reap the benefits (gamers, graphic artists, geeks etc..) Or is it purely a distributed computing application.


As a geek and a gamer I need to know, Im off to ask google


[edit on 13-2-2008 by bramski]

Indeed, very interesting! However, just for the sake of the forum, I think this would be better fit (and receive proper acknowledgment) in the Science and Tech forum. Nice find though! I've always been an XBox 360 guy though,

So he doubled the number of consoles? Last time Khanna used eight of them.

Astrophysicist Replaces Supercomputer with Eight PlayStation 3s

Pix from the thread above: