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Computing with Playstations

With $5000 of his research grant left burning a hole in his wallet earlier this year, Frank Mueller, a computer scientist from North Carolina State University, decided to hit the shops and buy eight Playstation 3 games consoles. Not for pleasure, you understand — no, Mueller figured that with eight Playstations strapped together he could create a modestly powered supercomputer. “The cost for performance is unbeatable,” he says.

Mueller’s “cluster” of games consoles doesn’t quite break into the TOP500 list of supercomputers. But if he had another $4m lying about, he reckons he could string together 10,000 Playstations to make the fastest supercomputer in the world.

So, could physicists use Playstations to save a few trips to Blue Gene? “Yes,” says Mueller, “if they are willing to substantially rewrite their most computer-intensive code portions in a non-standard API.” That’s the Application Programming Interface, for those of you who don’t know.

On his website, Mueller notes that he uses his Playstation cluster for “educational purposes”.

Posted by Jon Cartwright on Apr 29, 2008 11:19 AM | Permalink