New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations

The PlayStation3 has gigabit Ethernet, which is ideal for multi-tier servers. However, the PlayStation3 only has 512MB RAM. Regardless, it may be useful for many computationally intensive tasks:<p>The PS3's hardware has also been used to build supercomputers for high-performance computing. Terra Soft Solutions has a version of Yellow Dog Linux for the PlayStation 3, and sells PS3s with Linux pre-installed, in single units, and 6 and 32 node clusters. In addition, RapidMind is pushing their stream programming package for the PS3. Also, on January 3, 2007, Dr. Frank Mueller, Associate Professor of Computer Science at NCSU, clustered 8 PS3s. Mueller commented that the 512 MB of system RAM is a limitation for this particular application, and is considering attempting to retrofit more RAM. -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3</a>

Holy...when I was working at my last job (a financial software startup), I joked to my boss that we should port our software to the PS3's GPU and run a cluster of PlayStations. The math in quantitative finance is rather similar to the sort of massively-parallelizable vector calculations in computer graphics. Plus, I had this amusing image of hedge fund managers slaving away at their Dell workstations while the PlayStations were all locked in the server room, crunching numbers.<p>I'm impressed that someone actually did it, which goes to show that there's no idea too crazy to implement.

Calling 16 PS3s a supercomputer is a bit of a stretch. The article doesnt quote any numbers either. Cell with 8 SPEs can do about 200 Gflops SP matrix multiply. So I assume PS3 can do about 150 Gflops. 16*150=2400 gflops single precision .. not a supercomputer by todays standards i would say.

Wouldn't it be easier to use "full" Cell processors? Are they much more expensive than PS3s? I assume IBM sells other computers with Cell chip?<p>How do cell chips compare with modern graphic cards, I think they can be abused to do a similar thing?

sounds like a business venture