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This should make every single PS3 fan proud and happy. Over at North Carolina State University, Computer Science Associate Professor Dr. Frank Mueller has built a supercomputing academic cluster using eight PlayStation 3 consoles.

Being the first of its kind in the world, the set up costs around US 5,000 and is capable of high-performance computing. Mueller explained though that clusters is not an entirely new concept in the computing world.

Prominent businesses that use such setups include online site Google, the stock market, automotive design companies, and even scientists themselves. The professor remarked,

Scientific computing is just number crunching, which the PS3s are very good at given the Cell processor and deploying them in a cluster. Right now one limitation is the 512 megabyte RAM memory constraint, but it might be possible to retrofit more RAM. Wee just haven't cracked the case and explored that option yet.

Just so you guys have an idea how powerful the PS3 cluster is, take note that there is actually a list of the top 500 fastest computers in the world. The fastest is BlueGene/L, with more than 130,000 processors, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The setup designed by Mueller doesn't break into the top 500 though. But quite interestingly, the professor added that with approximately 10,000 PS3 machines, anyone could create the fastest computer in the world. Lastly, Mueller shared that they will be exploring ways on how to fully use this setup:

Here at NC State, wee will use it for educational purposes and for research. Wee are working with scientists to determine the needs and how our cluster can be used to their benefit, and our computer science faculty is already using the cluster to teach classes in operating systems, with parallel systems, compilers and gaming likely to follow.

- Source: [Gadgets]

(This post was last modified: 10/03/2007 02:07 PM by dasme.)

cool i like the idea of course double you tee eff would i use a supercomputer 4? downloading hershey kisses faster? that's what limewire is for desu

What a werid way to make computers desu.

ive seen them do it with XBOXs once, just to show that the xbox is just a pc. and it is, its rediculous :P MS should release XboxOS for all PCs

o_O idk about an xbox os prolly same as windows member microsoft makes xbox as well desu

beaner2k6 Wrote:cool i like the idea of course double you tee eff would i use a supercomputer 4? downloading hershey kisses faster? that's what limewire is for desu

Unless you're number crunching (eg encoding LOTS of videos, simulating the weather etc), it's kinda pointless.

Ge64 Wrote:ive seen them do it with XBOXs once, just to show that the xbox is just a pc. and it is, its rediculous :P

Meh.  It's for the novelty factor I guess - like why people build PCs inside of a NES case.

ive seen a gamecube inside a nes case once. 1337

Ge64 Wrote:ive seen a gamecube inside a nes case once. 1337

1337 indeed :D

Now, a PS3 inside an Atari... (whatever they looked like)

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:Now, a PS3 inside an Atari... (whatever they looked like)

:rofl:

I'm working on making a Xbox inside a Game boy micro.