Eight PS3 'Supercomputer' Ponders Gravity Waves

***wraggster*** · October 17th, 2007, 21:58

Jamie found a story about a inexpensive supercomputer being used by an astrophysicist to research gravity waves. The interesting bit is that the system is built using 8 PS3s. Since nobody is actually playing games on the system, it makes sense to use them for research projects like this, but I really wonder now what is defining 'Supercomputer'... I mean, a hundred PS3s sure, but 8? I think we are de-valuing the meaning of the word 'super'

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news..._supercomputer

**freitax** · October 17th, 2007, 22:51

"Since nobody is actually playing games on the system, it makes sense to use them for research projects like this,..." I almost died laughing with this "super"joke or maybe I'm de-valuing the meaning of the word "super" or maybe I'm also de-valuing the meaning of the word "joke".

**Gizmo356** · October 17th, 2007, 23:08

I hate this thread it makes my fingers hurt

**Basil Zero** · October 18th, 2007, 01:25

And.....well thats not the reason why people arent buying the system, its mostly because of the price, but hey at least the PS3 is seen as a "Useful" system xD

**mike03$$$** · October 18th, 2007, 01:34

i think they sould turn this into something similar to F@H

**cataphrax** · October 18th, 2007, 02:46

In no way are they devaluing the word supercomputer. All opinions of the PS3 aside, it's a powerful machine:

CPU: 8 3.2ghz processors (one is not used, it's there for redundancy)
GPU: RSX @550MHz
1.8 TFLOPS floating point performance
Full HD (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
Memory: 256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz
System Bandwidth:
Main RAM 25.6GB/s
VRAM 22.4GB/s
RSX 20GB/s (write) + 15GB/s (read)
SB< 2.5GB/s (write) + 2.5GB/s (read)

Eight PS3's would end up looking like this in terms of memory and cpu:
CPU: 64 3.2ghz processors (including the redundant ones)
Memory: 2GB XDR Main Ram @3.2GHz 256MB GDDR3 VRAM @700MHz

Thats seems powerful enough to me to qualify as a supercomputer.