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Eight PS3 'Supercomputer' Ponders Gravity Waves
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' :)
64 cpu's. That seems supercomputerish enough for me.
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Super is a relative term, what was a super computer is now a computer that I hand-me-downed to my mom so she could check her email and browse the web.
"I'm a Genius!"*
*Not an actual Genius
Well the guy used to use a 200-node parallel supercomputer, but now he prefers to use 8 PS3s. That to me proves that 8 PS3s is like a supercomputer TO HIM.
I'm sure there are faster setups available if had the money, but 100% of 8 PS3s indefinitely is preferable, from what he says, to the costly little slices of "real" supercomputers he tried to rent before.
I wonder if Sony could offer a "HPC PSP3" which provided a stripped down processor board without the shiny case, graphics memory etc. It would be interesting if the Cell processor could get better economies of scale.
For a supercomputer that's pretty cheap. Also I find the statement in the summary that there are no games to be played on the PS3 a bit childish. The PS3 has not been out for a year yet and there are multiple great games to get for it right now and even more coming very soon. I expected more from the Taco.
"This should be fun, and by fun, I mean a wholly depressing insight into the cognitive ability of some grown adults."
I think that the article imples that PS3s aren't flying off the shelves as fast as Sony might like and thus are sitting in a warehouse somewhere, otherwise going unused. Even the article claims that this was done mostly because of the open platform presented by Sony and the fact that this researcher was able to get the consoles free from Sony. This is great for Sony because a sold console is money in Sony's pocket regardless of who buys it and what they do with it. If they can convince researchers to buy PS3s then it's probably a better deal than selling them to gamers. Few gamers would buy the equivalent of 7 PS3s (about $2800) worth of games and accessories. Some will, but most won't; even when they do, it's spread over the life of the console. A researcher goes and gets 8 consoles, cash up front and there's $3200 for Sony (less taxes, mfg. costs, etc).
Maybe it's jsut me, but that sounds like a pretty good deal from Sony
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
Let me see if I get this straight, you can imagine a piece of code that doesn't mind churning on itself within 256KB, but you can't imagine having to keep 256MB of main memory fed from a network or disk? In my experience, any piece of code that can both benefit from extreme parallelism and fit both the code and enough data to be worth working on within 256KB can handle a few reads from a disk or the network once in a while. If it can't, then 256KB of memory isn't enough to keep the (sub)processor fed, and you need a machine with more on-die memory (many of which can be found).
Cell is very good at integers and single precision floats for workloads that are parallelizable and fit within 256KB. If you stray from any of that, there are plenty of interesting competitors.
Yeah, but is that real money or is that subdivision expensing. In other words, does it lose $240 because Sony must use $800 of resources to produce a $600 product, or because sony-chipfab charges sony-board-assembly $60 for a part that cost $5 to produce?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Please enlighten me. Who is stupid enough to by a million+ dollar computer without factoring in facility costs?
> 8 games? Yikes, either you play *everything* or you've got some real crud in there. Care to elaborate?
The four games I was referring to were Ninja Gaiden Sigma (88), Skate (85), Stuntman: Ignition (75), and Warhawk (84). The downloadable game was Super Stardust HD (84). None of those games are even remotely close to "crud".
The four games I referred to having an interest in purchasing before the end of the year are Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools Of Destruction, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Rock Band, and the collector's edition of Stranglehold. I might also consider Army Of Two, Assassin's Creed, and Call Of Duty 4, depending on the reviews.
> To give an idea, the top 8 games on PS3 get metacritic scores of 85 or more [...] Only one of those is over 90. To compare, the 360 has *27* games at 85 or more [...] 9 of which rate 90 or more.
The original post had nothing to do with the 360 -- it was about the insinuation that no one uses the PS3 for gaming, which is ridiculous.
You're also making an apples to oranges comparison, because the 360 has been out longer and has a much larger base of titles. But if you want to compare, as of October 13th Metacritic's aggregated ratings for the 360, PS3, and Wii show that the 360 has 264 rated games, the PS3 has 82, and the Wii has 87. Since the PS3 and Wii came out later than the 360 and around the same time as each other, this makes sense.
If you look at the percentage of each console's library that has a metascore of 75 (out of 100) or higher, the PS3 leads with 54%, followed by the 360 at 44%, then the Wii with only 16%. If you go with a metascore of 80+, the PS3 has 34%, the 360 has 27%, and the Wii has only 8% above that level. At 90+ the Wii has 3%, the 360 has 3%, and the PS3 trails with only 1% of its library at that level.
Going by percentages, the PS3 and 360 libraries are of roughly equivalent quality, while the Wii's lags far behind.
> the general sentiment is the PS3 needs a killer app (like a halo, gears of war, or some other really good exclusive title) to make it worth getting.
The general sentiment is also that Iraq was involved in 9/11 and that Britney Spears's personal life is somehow newsworthy. I'll think for myself, thanks.
That said, every console gets a "killer app" eventually. I'm sure the inevitable God Of War III will fill that void if nothing else does beforehand.