PS3 Fanboy

Besides the Roadrunner and our beloved PS3, the Cell processor can now add another task it can do into its repertoire. Repsol, one of the world's ten largest oil companies, is employing the use the of the Cell processor, more specifically the PowerXCell 8i variant on a BladeCenter QS22 computer, to "analyze undersea rock formations in the search for untapped reserves." An analyst commented that 75% of the reserves are in deep water, which are 30,000 feet below and are estimated to hold 56 billion barrels of oil. This amount would meet the entire U.S. demand for oil and gas for about five years. The use of a technique called reverse time migration will allow Repsol to survey regions as much as six times faster and reach areas that were inaccessible before.

What do you guys think about this? Will this lower gas prices somewhere far, far away from $5 a gallon? Are you going to mod your PS3 to start drilling for oil in your backyard? Ah, the possibilities...

The Cell processor, known as the heart of the PS3, is being used every day in rather extraordinary situations. IBM has crafted yet another supercomputer, codenamed Roadrunner, which runs at a record-setting petaflop speed. (A petaflop is the equivalent of one thousand trillion calculations per second.) This speed makes Roadrunner twice as fast as the previous best supercomputer.

"We are getting closer to simulating the real world," Bijan Davari, vice president of next generation computing systems at IBM, told BBC News. The computer will be installed in a US government laboratory to monitor the US nuclear stockpile. It will also be used for research into astronomy, genomics and climate change.

The Roadrunner will use less than 20,000 chips, and will use a hybrid design of both conventional supercomputer chips, and PS3's Cell processor. The next design by IBM will be nicknamed "Skynet."

[Thanks, Richard!]

Like Clark Kent, it's time again for the PS3 to discard its nerd-goggles and rip that button-down shirt off to reveal what lies beneath: a superhero. Or a supercomputer, if you felt the comparison went a bit far. A professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Guarav Khanna, bought eight PS3's and clustered them together. Using Linux, he and his colleagues are enjoying some heavy-duty scientific research thanks to their newfound supercomputer.

Khanna offers up the notion the supercomputer could be used outside of scientific research. See, most supercomputers have intense calculations queued up and answers can take a day or two to get back to researchers. If every school had a PS3, or this chain-gang of PS3's as it were, that problem would go away. It could also double as a computer running Linux allowing kids to do work and surf the web. Obviously. Now, PS3, go get your glasses and shirt back on, because we want to play some Folklore.

[via PlayStation Forums]

Cell's immense power is largely undisputed by the scientific community. Folding@Home is just one example of how Cell and the PS3 can compute massive amounts of data for the sake of scientific research. An astrophysicist recently linked eight PS3 systems together and was able to compute the same amount of data as 200 supercomputers. After Gaurav Khanna created code optimized for the PS3, Sony took attention and donated a few systems to his research.

"Basically, it's almost like a replacement," he told Wired. "I don't have to use that supercomputer anymore, which is a good thing." While one PS3 costs $500, a single supercomputer can cost $5000. The cost of eight PS3s is incredibly negligible compared to the massive cost of traditional supercomputers.

With his PS3s at hand, Khanna will be researching gravitational waves.

[Via Digg]