FreeBSD Running On PS3

An anonymous reader writes "One week after Sony's PlayStation 3 private cryptography key was obtained, FreeBSD is up and running on the PS3. Nathan Whitehorn writes: 'Yesterday, I imported support for the Sony Playstation 3 into our 64-bit PowerPC port, expanding our game console support into the current generation. There are still a few rough edges due to missing hardware support, but the machine boots and runs FreeBSD stably. These rough edges should be smoothed out in time for the 9.0 release.'" Update: 01/10 15:04 GMT by KD : As several commenters have pointed out, the submission was misleading in that BSD runs in OtherOS, making no use of the cracked keys.

Comments

Firmware 3.21

[project-nova]

From TFA:

Supported hardware:
- Sony Playstation 3 Fat, firmware version 3.21
- Netbooting only
- 480i/480p only

!News

They had me at "Free"

[Fibe-Piper]

...wait, I have to buy a PS3?

Re:They had me at "Free"

[the_humeister]

You don't have to, but if you get caught taking one without paying for it, you might go to jail.

Also, since the source code is open for all to see, you can just read the code and allocate all resources using pen and paper. It's much better than D&D, trust me.

Running in OtherOS, not natively

[ard]

There is no relation to the cracked keys, as it runs in the OtherOS mode. I.e. instead of Linux, you can run FreeBSD in OtherOS.

*NOT* related to the recent crypto break

[fgrieu]

This is *NOT* related to the recent crypto break, as demonstrated by the release note stating

Supported hardware:Sony Playstation 3 Fat, firmware version 3.21

Francois Grieu

who needs scooby-doo?

[alen]

this is so fuckin' cool. next time my 3 year old wants to watch a scooby DVD, Cars or play the Rub a Dub Rub demo i'll just boot up the PS3 to the command line and excite him with /home/var

Re:who needs scooby-doo?

[Crudely_Indecent]

Maybe that's his child's username...or worse, it's his childs name!

Cool - no hardware hack required

[Algorithmnast]

I was worried at first that I'd have to burn a chip or something equally prone to destroying an expensive toy... but after I actually researched it... here, I find that you don't have to mod the PS3 at all - you just have to create a disk that looks like a game disk to the PS3.

And if you want to go back to PS3 behavior, you just reset the PS3 box.

Now that is a cool hack.

Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those..

[eyegor]

We do a lot of High Performance computing where I work. I currently run a 1472 core ROCKS cluster and the price/core of a PS3 cluster is pretty good compared with an HP blade.

Because of management issues, I can't see running a huge cluster of PS3's, but it's an angle we're pursuing to see how well it works. Tesla-based clusters are also something being considered, but they type of work you can do on them is a bit more limited than a general purpose cluster based on conventional blades.

Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those..

[Quince alPillan]

The Navy says that they're cheaper than equivalent boards from IBM.

Though a single 3.2 GHz cell processor can deliver over 200 GFLOPS, whereas the Sony PS3 configuration delivers approximately 150 GFLOPS, the approximately tenfold cost difference per GFLOP makes the Sony PS3 the only viable technology for HPC applications.

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/09/military-purchases-2200-ps3s/

Re:I only have one word to say about this

[hairyfeet]

Well to be fair the Linux guy would want to "spice up" your drink with all these 'free" ingredients that were made for a dozen different drinks that didn't go together, so what you ended up with smelled suspiciously like RMS's feet and tasted just as bad. The Windows guy would just pour you some stale shit from a can while swearing it is completely fresh and flavorful, while the Apple guy would offer you an "iSmoothy" that cost three times what it was worth and when you told him you didn't like Pineapple he would say "Liar! Everyone LOVES Pineapple! You just aren't cultured enough to appreciate the experience!"

So I guess the moral of the story is to pour your own drinks and OS guys typically have bad taste in booze.