Titanio
17-Oct-2007, 12:30
Not really a technical article, but one of those "what other people are doing with Cell/PS3" stories..
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/10/ps3_supercomputer
As the architect of this research, Dr. Gaurav Khanna is employing his so-called "gravity grid" of PS3s to help measure these theoretical gravity waves -- ripples in space-time that travel at the speed of light -- that Einstein's Theory of Relativity predicted would emerge when such an event takes place.
Not to encourage a slew of 'begging letters' to Sony, but this guy managed to bag his PS3s for free from Sony, after demonstrating the performance he achieved with one PS3 and suitably impressing them.
Khanna says that his gravity grid has been up and running for a little over a month now and that, crudely speaking, his eight consoles are equal to about 200 of the supercomputing nodes he used to rely on.
"Basically, it's almost like a replacement," he says. "I don't have to use that supercomputer anymore, which is a good thing."
It's kind of interesting that most of the 'homebrew' interest in PS3 doesn't seem to be so much 'homebrew' as 'researchbrew'.
edit - more info here: http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/ps3.html
He reckons the performance per dollar available to them on PS3 is better than anything else out there - and this is double-precision work too. The '200 node supercomputer' referenced earlier in the comparison would appear to be 200 Blue Gene nodes - and he thinks there's a good bit of headroom for further optimisation.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/10/ps3_supercomputer
As the architect of this research, Dr. Gaurav Khanna is employing his so-called "gravity grid" of PS3s to help measure these theoretical gravity waves -- ripples in space-time that travel at the speed of light -- that Einstein's Theory of Relativity predicted would emerge when such an event takes place.
Not to encourage a slew of 'begging letters' to Sony, but this guy managed to bag his PS3s for free from Sony, after demonstrating the performance he achieved with one PS3 and suitably impressing them.
Khanna says that his gravity grid has been up and running for a little over a month now and that, crudely speaking, his eight consoles are equal to about 200 of the supercomputing nodes he used to rely on.
"Basically, it's almost like a replacement," he says. "I don't have to use that supercomputer anymore, which is a good thing."
It's kind of interesting that most of the 'homebrew' interest in PS3 doesn't seem to be so much 'homebrew' as 'researchbrew'.
edit - more info here: http://gravity.phy.umassd.edu/ps3.html
He reckons the performance per dollar available to them on PS3 is better than anything else out there - and this is double-precision work too. The '200 node supercomputer' referenced earlier in the comparison would appear to be 200 Blue Gene nodes - and he thinks there's a good bit of headroom for further optimisation.