How To Build a Homebrew PS3 Cluster Supercomputer

eldavojohn writes "UMass Dartmouth Physics Professor Gaurav Khanna and UMass Dartmouth Principal Investigator Chris Poulin have created a step-by-step guide designed to show you how to build your own supercomputer for about $4,000. They are also hoping that by publishing this guide they will bring about a new kind of software development targeting this architecture & grid (I know a few failed NLP projects of my own that could use some new hardware). If this catches on for research institutions it may increase Sony's sales, but they might not be seeing the corresponding sale of games spike (where they make the most profit)."

Why use PS3s?

[JanusFury]

Why would you want to use PS3s for a homebrew supercomputing cluster if it means you have to write and optimize code for the SPEs to get benefit out of it? The PS3's linux environment doesn't let you utilize the GPU or all of the built-in SPEs and it doesn't have a lot of RAM available either. It seems like it would be cheaper to build a cluster out of commodity PC parts, and maybe use GPUs+CUDA to get more muscle without having to completely hand-roll your own accelerated computation code (since CUDA is roughly C). I can't imagine that the PS3 would end up cheaper for these purposes, considering it includes a Blu-Ray player along with a bunch of other things you're not going to be using.

Limited use

[idiot900]

Couple issues with this as an alternative to the garden-variety x86 cluster connected with InfiniBand:

Slow network interconnect. For problems that are not trivially parallel, network latency is usually a big deal. Ethernet doesn't cut it.
Lack of RAM. 'Nuff said.
Have to care about Cell and PS3 architecture. The codes ("codes" has a slightly different meaning in the context of supercomputing) have to be modified to take advantage of this very specific architecture. Software always outlives hardware, so in the long run the effort may not be worth it.

That said, it's really cheap. If your application isn't held back too much by these issues then enjoy your insanely cheap cluster!

Re:Message from Government Man

[johanatan]

Or maybe he did catch it and thinks that sort of thing belongs on Reddit?

Re:Subsidized Supercomputers

[timeOday]

The number of PS3's sold will never be enough to hurt Sony's bottom line, but will boost the image of the console. Having credible scientists call your product a "supercomputer" is worth something. Does Ferrari's Forumla 1 racing team pay for itself? Nah, it's an investment to promote an image.

Re:ibm

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

IBM is probably banking on the existence of people who want Cell processors in systems with more than 256megs of RAM. Other IBM value-adds would presumably include rack mountability, support for netbooting and other convenient management stuff, and so forth.

If your application leans almost entirely on the CPU with very little need for RAM, and you have an army of screwdriver monkeys(or grad students) to do all the legwork, the PS3 is an excellent deal. If you need something with RAM capacity that wasn't a joke in 2001, and/or management features that won't have you tearing your eyes out when you have 10,000 of them, then IBM smells opportunity.

Re:Invader Zim is non-free 23-skidoo!

[mollymoo]

sorry, but that's stupid -how many pop culture references from 1923 are relevant to TODAY's pop culture:

A perfect illustration of the fact that copyright terms are way too long.

What a ripoff!

[Anonymous Coward]

What a complete farce! Here I was all excited to go see this PS3 cluster "guide". From TFA:

"Found at www.ps3cluster.org, the resource fully illustrates how to create a fully functioning and high performance supercomputer with the Sony Playstation 3."

And what is actually *on* the site?? How to install Linux on a PS3 (as if there weren't any guides for that out there already). Then, they show the magical touch where they download the stock Fedora Open MPI implementation, and configure it using all *TWO THREADS* of the Power PC unit.

No mention that Open MPI doesn't even utilize the synergistic processors on the Cell. No benchmarks. Nada. They can boot Linux, and run a networked application that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the CELL architecture itself.

From the site: "One of the authors (Khanna) estimates that his MPI computations run much faster than on desktop workstation chipsets, and that his original 8 PS3 (i.e. 64 core) Cell cluster had comparable if not better performance to a 200 Node IBM Blue Gene system."

B.S. (And I am being generous.) Their MPI isn't using any 64 processors (when there are actually only 56 available cores for use on the PS3). His data sets may run about as fast as they would on 8 older Apple laptops, but there is no way they're anywhere near a Blue Gene. My tax dollars had better not have been used to fund this "research"....