klac
10-24-07, 06:39 PM
UMass professor joins eight PlayStation cell chips to run highly complex calculations
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The professor has been renting time on supercomputers at NASA and the National Science Foundation to run highly complicated calculations on the amount of radiation emitted when a black hole swallows a star. That supercomputing time, though, doesn't come easily or cheap, Khanna said. In an average year, he rents about 30,000 hours, which costs between $20,000 and $30,000, a significant chunk of his grant money.
To ease his supercomputing plight, Khanna turned to the cell chip inside the PS3. By linking eight of them together, he said he gets the same processing power as a supercomputer with 200 processors.
"For $4,000 or so, I can get eight PS3s that can do the same task that I'd do on a supercomputer," he said. ...
Full article: ComputerWorld.com (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9043942&intsrc=hm_list)
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The professor has been renting time on supercomputers at NASA and the National Science Foundation to run highly complicated calculations on the amount of radiation emitted when a black hole swallows a star. That supercomputing time, though, doesn't come easily or cheap, Khanna said. In an average year, he rents about 30,000 hours, which costs between $20,000 and $30,000, a significant chunk of his grant money.
To ease his supercomputing plight, Khanna turned to the cell chip inside the PS3. By linking eight of them together, he said he gets the same processing power as a supercomputer with 200 processors.
"For $4,000 or so, I can get eight PS3s that can do the same task that I'd do on a supercomputer," he said. ...
Full article: ComputerWorld.com (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9043942&intsrc=hm_list)