A Rough Guide to Scientific Computing On the PlayStation3
Sat, 2007-10-27 18:58
|
The idea of using game consoles as supercomputers is not new. Many clusters based on Sony Playstation and other console emerged the last few years as an affordable alternative to clusters built from mainstream off the shelf computing components.
Recently, Wired Magazine covered the PS3 with an article about an astrophysicist who replaced a supercomputer with Eight PlayStation 3s.
The Sony PlayStation 3 has a number of unique features that make it particularly suited for scientific computation.Its incredibly low cost makes it very attractive as a scientific computing node, that is part of a cluster. In fact, its highly plausible that the raw computing power per dollar that the PS3 offers, is significantly higher than anything else on the market today!
A 68 page pdf on using Sony PS3's for scientific computing is now available for those interested in using the PS3 a supercomputing platform.
Turnkey cluster solutions based on PS3 are also available, for example. A 32 node cluster comes to about 50,000 USD.