PS3 Technology Powers Supercomputer
Videogame hardware inspired design of supercomputer that can simulate nuclear blasts.
Engineers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM Corp. recently unveiled Roadrunner, a $100 million machine that occupies 6,000 square feet, weighs 500,000 pounds, and sustains performance at petaflop speed (1,000 trillion calculations per second). The Associated Press' H. Josef Herbert reports that some elements of the data-crunching monster -- which could be used to help develop an AIDS vaccine or understand the origins of the universe -- can be traced back to popular videogames.
In some ways, it's "a very souped-up Sony PlayStation 3," David Turek, vice president of IBM's supercomputing programs, told Herbert. "We took the basic chip design (of a PlayStation) and advanced its capability."
