Gaurav Khanna combined games consoles to make a super-computer capable of serious number-crunching Playing the PlayStation and getting your homework done are not usually activities which go hand-in-hand, but one university professor may have cracked it.
Dr Gaurav Khanna has no less than 16 Sony PlayStation 3 consoles working together to create a super-computer which he says rivals the power of more than 200 conventional PCs.
But Dr Khanna is no hardcore gamer. Instead, the University of Massachusetts professor is using the entertainment machines for highly complex calculations.
His research is attempting to go back 13 billion years to learn about the origins of the Big Bang, as well as looking at the black holes that exist in space today.
He explained to Digital Planet just how he manages to harness the consoles to carry out the work.
“Start Quote
End Quote Dr Gaurav Khanna University of MassachusettsI could use the same number-crunching capability to actually solve a hard mathematical problem or hard scientific problem.”
“The PlayStation comes loaded with GameOS - which is what you use to navigate through to look at pictures and movies and to launch games. But it also has the option, if you dig into the settings, to install [an] alternative operating system.”
read the full article herere-posted from The Austin Geek Blog
