PS2 Linux Cluster Supercomputing
 

Thought some of you might be interested in this story about the PS2 being used as a linux cluster for "cheap supercomputing". Apparently this is a good way for projects on tight budgets to perform massive calculations without spending a lot. Here's a nice pic of the cluster.

Holy crap what would you need all that for?!

That is sweet... I wonder what they use it for?

neat! They're probably using it to crunch some serious numbers for some Ph.D's Math or physics research projects or perhaps use it as a cheap render farm? who knows.

It seems like it would be cheaper and easier to use old PC hardware for this.

This explains why Sony has sold so many PS2's ;)

*Must resist console bashing comments...* :)

The reason PS2 are better suited to scientific computing tasks than old PC's is because of the 2 Vector Units that allow for an amazing amount of FLOPS and therfore number crunching. PC's are general purpose processors whereas the VU's are specifically designed to crunch raw numbers efficiently and without hits to performance.

ps. Thanks for not console bashing. :) This was just an FYI post that's kinda of cool IMO. Sort of like people using the XBOX as their digital media center.

This is old news. www.slashdot.org had this story shortly after the PS2 shipped. People realized this a long time ago.

I read slashdot fairly regularly and I don't remember seeing something like this. There were people using standalone PS2's to perform some basic computing functions. This is a cluster of PS2's configured to take advantage of distributed computing and the high-speed calculation power of the PS2's vector units.

I think this is a nudge in the direction PS3 will be taking with many mid-level processors connected by a super-high-speed bus to share computational workload.

Some more info courtesy of the NY Times.