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I'd love to hear their opinion on removal of the "Other OS" option. I also know several other institutions that have built their own supercomputers out of PlayS

by Maakuth 16y ago

I'd love to hear their opinion on removal of the "Other OS" option. I also know several other institutions that have built their own supercomputers out of PlayStations and aren't that happy about that move.

ZoFreX 16y ago
Why not? If the supercomputer was pre-existing, the Other OS option won't disappear unless they do a firmware update. The only reason I know of to do an update is to play the latest games, so unless they're having sessions of GTA in between protein folding, I doubt it's an issue.
- dredge 16y ago
  Replacing broken PS3 hardware is an issue. As in, they can't do it.
  - binarymax 16y ago
    Could they downgrade the firmware?
  - dmm 16y ago
    PS3 firmwares can now be downgraded. Somebody discovered a service dongle key, which allows for downgrading FWs (but not the latest). That would make it slightly easier to find replacements. Also somebody is working on some patches which allow linux to run on top of the same gameos hypervisor that the commercial games do. This allows access to an extra spu and slightly more ram too. It does require an exploit to allow the execution of unsigned code. Here's the git repo: http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=asbestos.git http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=asbestos.git Hector Martin has been playing with kinect for the past month so that explains the lack of progress.
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    I don't think this is a big issue if you're buying in bulk. With that many PS3's, you should have a good estimate of how many are going to fail in the lifetime of the supercomputer. I doubt the Air Force didn't buy spares already, since they don't want to rely on Sony building new PS3s.
alecco 16y ago
That was a very dick move from Sony. They promoted it like crazy and got a lot of us investing time on this architecture just to back-stab us in the end. On the other hand, a large institution can invest in a PS3 development kit and develop their crunching software to run within Sony's OS. Anyway, Cell is dead and both Intel and AMD have similar architectures coming out next year for x86. I wouldn't bet on PS3/Cell right now.

by Maakuth 16y ago

ZoFreX 16y ago

Why not? If the supercomputer was pre-existing, the Other OS option won't disappear unless they do a firmware update. The only reason I know of to do an update is to play the latest games, so unless they're having sessions of GTA in between protein folding, I doubt it's an issue.

dredge 16y ago
Replacing broken PS3 hardware is an issue. As in, they can't do it.
- binarymax 16y ago
  Could they downgrade the firmware?
- dmm 16y ago
  PS3 firmwares can now be downgraded. Somebody discovered a service dongle key, which allows for downgrading FWs (but not the latest). That would make it slightly easier to find replacements. Also somebody is working on some patches which allow linux to run on top of the same gameos hypervisor that the commercial games do. This allows access to an extra spu and slightly more ram too. It does require an exploit to allow the execution of unsigned code. Here's the git repo: http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=asbestos.git http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=asbestos.git Hector Martin has been playing with kinect for the past month so that explains the lack of progress.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  I don't think this is a big issue if you're buying in bulk. With that many PS3's, you should have a good estimate of how many are going to fail in the lifetime of the supercomputer. I doubt the Air Force didn't buy spares already, since they don't want to rely on Sony building new PS3s.

alecco 16y ago

That was a very dick move from Sony. They promoted it like crazy and got a lot of us investing time on this architecture just to back-stab us in the end. On the other hand, a large institution can invest in a PS3 development kit and develop their crunching software to run within Sony's OS. Anyway, Cell is dead and both Intel and AMD have similar architectures coming out next year for x86. I wouldn't bet on PS3/Cell right now.