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New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations
Louisa Hearn
February 26, 2008
When the PlayStation3 was released in November 2006, Gaurav Khanna's wife braved long queues so he could be one of the first people in the US to get his hands on the gaming console.
But the astrophysicist was not itching to burn some rubber in Gran Turismo or shoot hoops in NBA 07. Instead he wanted to build his own supercomputer.
Mr Khanna now owns 16 PS3s, which spend their days simulating the activities of very large black holes in the universe for the physics department at the University of Massachusetts.
Hooked together in a single cluster, the PS3 consoles provide his department with the same amount of computing power as a 400-node supercomputer.
"The challenge these days with supercomputing facilities is that there is a lot of demand for them. So even if I submitted a job that would be expected to take about an hour, it could actually take two days to get started because the queues are so long.
"The PS3 cluster is all mine and was very low cost to set up, which makes it really attractive," he says.
What makes the gaming console vastly superior to high-end computers for complex research algorithms, Mr Khanna says, is the Cell chip built by IBM to facilitate high-end gaming functions on the latest generation of consoles.
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Louisa Hearn
February 26, 2008
When the PlayStation3 was released in November 2006, Gaurav Khanna's wife braved long queues so he could be one of the first people in the US to get his hands on the gaming console.
But the astrophysicist was not itching to burn some rubber in Gran Turismo or shoot hoops in NBA 07. Instead he wanted to build his own supercomputer.
Mr Khanna now owns 16 PS3s, which spend their days simulating the activities of very large black holes in the universe for the physics department at the University of Massachusetts.
Hooked together in a single cluster, the PS3 consoles provide his department with the same amount of computing power as a 400-node supercomputer.
"The challenge these days with supercomputing facilities is that there is a lot of demand for them. So even if I submitted a job that would be expected to take about an hour, it could actually take two days to get started because the queues are so long.
"The PS3 cluster is all mine and was very low cost to set up, which makes it really attractive," he says.
What makes the gaming console vastly superior to high-end computers for complex research algorithms, Mr Khanna says, is the Cell chip built by IBM to facilitate high-end gaming functions on the latest generation of consoles.
...