Archives
October 2007
10/31/07
10/30/07
10/29/07
10/29/07
10/29/07
10/29/07
10/28/07
10/27/07
10/26/07
10/26/07
10/26/07
10/26/07
10/25/07
10/25/07
10/25/07
10/25/07
10/24/07
10/24/07
10/24/07
10/23/07
10/23/07
10/23/07
10/23/07
10/22/07
10/22/07
10/22/07
10/22/07
10/21/07
10/20/07
10/19/07
10/19/07
10/19/07
10/18/07
10/18/07
10/18/07
10/18/07
10/17/07
10/17/07
10/17/07
10/17/07
A Far Better Use Than Dance Dance Revolution
10/16/07
10/16/07
10/16/07
10/16/07
10/15/07
10/15/07
10/15/07
10/15/07
10/14/07
10/13/07
10/12/07
10/12/07
10/11/07
10/10/07
10/10/07
10/9/07
10/9/07
10/9/07
10/8/07
10/7/07
10/6/07
10/5/07
10/5/07
10/5/07
10/4/07
10/4/07
10/4/07
10/4/07
10/3/07
10/3/07
10/3/07
10/3/07
10/2/07
10/2/07
10/2/07
10/1/07
10/1/07
10/1/07
10/1/07
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
10:40:00 AM EDT
Hearing Oblivion With Bells -- Underworld
So, there was this scientist, and we wanted to model gravitational waves that occur when a black hole eats a star. You know, like you do. But he got tired of having to get government grants to use various supercomputer sites to model his work. So he took eight PlayStation 3s, linked them together, and made a supercomputer out of that:
It turns out that the PS3 is ideal for doing precisely the kind of heavy computational lifting Khanna requires for his project, and the fact that it's a relatively open platform makes programming scientific applications feasible.
"The interest in the PS3 really was for two main reasons," explains Khanna, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth who specializes in computational astrophysics. "One of those is that Sony did this remarkable thing of making the PS3 an open platform, so you can in fact run Linux on it and it doesn't control what you do."
He also says that the console's Cell processor, co-developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba, can deliver massive amounts of power, comparable even to that of a supercomputer -- if you know how to optimize code and have a few extra consoles lying around that you can string together.
And during the downtime, you can play first person shooters!
A while back, while I was still writing for the Official US Playstation Magazine (which, alas, no longer exists) I said just prior to the release of the PS3 that $600 was a heck of a lot to pay for a game system, but not a lot of money to pay for what is essentially an extremely powerful computer (not to mention at the time it was the cheapest Blu-Ray DVD player out there). It pleases me when I'm proven right.
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | 
digg this
10:40:00 AM EDT
Hearing Oblivion With Bells -- Underworld
A Far Better Use Than Dance Dance Revolution
So, there was this scientist, and we wanted to model gravitational waves that occur when a black hole eats a star. You know, like you do. But he got tired of having to get government grants to use various supercomputer sites to model his work. So he took eight PlayStation 3s, linked them together, and made a supercomputer out of that:
It turns out that the PS3 is ideal for doing precisely the kind of heavy computational lifting Khanna requires for his project, and the fact that it's a relatively open platform makes programming scientific applications feasible.
"The interest in the PS3 really was for two main reasons," explains Khanna, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth who specializes in computational astrophysics. "One of those is that Sony did this remarkable thing of making the PS3 an open platform, so you can in fact run Linux on it and it doesn't control what you do."
He also says that the console's Cell processor, co-developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba, can deliver massive amounts of power, comparable even to that of a supercomputer -- if you know how to optimize code and have a few extra consoles lying around that you can string together.
And during the downtime, you can play first person shooters!
A while back, while I was still writing for the Official US Playstation Magazine (which, alas, no longer exists) I said just prior to the release of the PS3 that $600 was a heck of a lot to pay for a game system, but not a lot of money to pay for what is essentially an extremely powerful computer (not to mention at the time it was the cheapest Blu-Ray DVD player out there). It pleases me when I'm proven right.
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
10/17/07 8:59 PM