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' :)

Comments

Inexpensive, eh?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I mean, a hundred PS3s sure, but 8? I think we are de-valuing the meaning of the word 'super' :) I think we are de-valuing the meaning of the word 'inexpensive' :)

Re:Inexpensive, eh?

[The13thSin]

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.

Re:Inexpensive, eh?

[smussman]

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 IIRC, Sony sells consoles at a loss, and then gets that money back over the life of the console with license fees from games. So selling 8 consoles which will not generate money from game license fees, but still having to take the loss is not a good deal for Sony.

Re:Inexpensive, eh?

[smussman]

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? I found the original analysis of the PS3 cost here. At least 50% of the components are made by other manufacturers.

Re:Inexpensive, eh?

[SailorSpork]

How much something "costs" to produce isn't as simple as the cost of parts. It may cost $5 for just the parts, it may also cost and extra $1-5 for the direct labor to put the board together, and it may cost and extra $1 to ship it. Then there's the cost of maintaining a chip fab, indirect labor and mangement costs and bribes to the chinese government to keep their cheap wage factory certified, divided over the 2-300 PS3's produced per month to keep up with worldwide demand, not to mention the cost of worldwide marketing, the cost of years of system & Blu-Ray R&D spread over each unit... keep in mind that the cost of making your PS3, Wii or software title is more than just more than the sum of the cost of the individual parts.
 
Sorry, that was my Cost Accounding class talking, I'll stop now.

8 systems x 8 cores =

[zifferent]

64 cpu's. That seems supercomputerish enough for me.

Re:8 systems x 8 cores =

[Kupek]

It's only six cores available to Linux per Cell processor on a PS3. One is reserved for the Game OS, and one is disabled to achieve a higher yield on fabrication. (The Game OS is always running, since Linux actually runs on top of a hypervisor.)

Mystery solved

[eaglesnax]

Now we know who bought all the PS3s!

9 cores?

[oblivion95]

They should have used 9 cores on the Cell. Then, they'd be using Seven of Nine.

It's only six cores available to Linux per Cell processor on a PS3. One is reserved for the Game OS, and one is disabled to achieve a higher yield on fabrication.

Re:Obligatory

[adisakp]

It would've been cheaper to just buy a Cray.

If you read the article and followed the link to his PS3 Gravity Grid site, you'd know a couple things about the cost (FREE) for this computational power:

#1) The total cost of purchasing an entire "PS3 Gravity Grid" supercomputer for yourself is less than the cost of a single simulation run on a BlueGene. In other words, you can buy the cow, the pasture, and a barn for the price of a gallon of milk.

#2) Sony *DONATED* his 8-node cluster (albeit with 20GB PS3's which they were closing out at the time) so he actually got a "supercomputer" for nearly free.

#3) The power of the 8-node PS3 cluster is roughly the same as a 200 node partition on a BlueGene SuperComputer (1 PS3 = 25 Blue Gene nodes). With 8 Cell CPUs, he has 56 SPU's running at ~3GHz to crank through his computations. This would mean a single CELL SPU is roughly 4X more powerful than a single BlueGene node which isn't unreasonable considering that it runs at a higher clockspeed (the supercomputer has to worry more about heat dissipation with hundreds or thousands of cores).

#4) I believe that by the US Gov't's somewhat outdated standards, a PS2 qualifies as a supercomputer. The FPU power in a PS3 is on ther order of 200 times higher than that of the PS2 for single precision and considerably more for double precision (which is emulated in software on the PS2).