Engineer Creates First Academic Playstation
3 Computing Cluster
Using eight Sony Playstation 3 units, Dr. Frank Mueller built a supercomputing
cluster capable of high-performance computing and running the latest in computer
gaming. Credit: NC State University
The Sony Playstation 3, Xbox and Nintendo Wii have captivated a generation of computer gamers
with bold graphics and rapid-fire animation. But these high-tech toys can do a lot more than just play
games. At North Carolina State University, Dr. Frank Mueller imagined using the power of the new
PS3 to create a high-powered computing environment for a fraction of the cost of the
supercomputers on the market.
Mueller, an associate professor of computer science, has built a supercomputing cluster capable of both
high-performance computing and running the latest in computer gaming. His cluster of eight PS3 machines
– the first such academic cluster in the world – packs the power of a small supercomputer, but at a total cost
of about $5,000, it costs less than some desktop computers that have only a fraction of the computing
power.
“Clusters are not new to the computing world,” Mueller says. “Google, the stock market, automotive design
companies and scientists use clusters, but this is the first academic computing cluster built from Playstation
3s.
“Scientific computing is just number crunching, which the PS3s are very good at given the Cell processor
and deploying them in a cluster,” Mueller says. “Right now one limitation is the 512 megabyte RAM
memory constraint, but it might be possible to retrofit more RAM. We just haven’t cracked the case and
explored that option yet.” Another problem lies in limited speed for double-precision calculations required
by scientific applications, but announcements for the next-generation Cell processor address this issue.
“In the computing world there is a list of the top 500 fastest computers,” Mueller says. Currently the fastest
is BlueGene/L, a supercomputer with more than 130,000 processors at Lawrence Livermore National
La