Pete_LeGrant January 29, 2009 PlayStation 3, Tech 49 views Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

MSNBC reports that scientists are using a cluster of Playstation 3s to simulate black holes. Who would’ve thought you could take the console beyond its games to do work in science?

When black holes are perturbed, they vibrate
somewhat like a ringing bell. Now astronomers have narrowed down the
rotational speed at which that vibration should stop.

As
is typical, they did it out by running a simulation. But instead of a
supercomputer, they used a batch of Sony PlayStation 3 gaming consoles
wired together.

The so-called PS3 Gravity Grid,
a network of 16 PlayStation 3 consoles grouped together in a cluster
capable of running simulations that rival a dedicated supercomputer at
a much lower cost.

It’s cheaper to use a cluster of PS3s than to rent a supercomputer:

Rather than renting computer time on a
supercomputer that could cost $5,000 per simulation, Burko and his
colleagues used the PS3 Gravity Grid built by Gaurav Khanna, a physics
professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

The
cluster can be built for around $6,000, and allows simulations to be
repeated at no extra cost. The system is tailored to simulations that
require massive amounts of computations, but relatively little RAM
memory.

Check out how to build a PS3 cluster here.

Dr. Khanna writes:

[The PS3] has a revolutionary processor called the Cell processor
which was developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba. This processor has a main
CPU (called the PPU) and several (six for the PS3) special compute
engines (called SPUs) available for raw computation. Moreover, each SPU
performs vector operations, which implies that they can compute on
multiple data, in a single step. Finally, its incredibly low cost make
it very attractive as a scientific computing node i.e. part of a
cluster. In fact, its highly plausible that the raw computing power per dollar that the PS3 offers, is significantly higher than anything else on the market today!

Looks like Sony has another impressive achievement to add to their list!

-Pete LeGrant