In mid-2007, Gaurav Khanna, a professor in the Physics Department of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth independently built a message-passing based cluster using eight PS3s running Fedora Linux, named the PS3 Gravity Grid. It was built with support from Sony Computer Entertainment as the first PS3 cluster with published scientific results. It performed astrophysical simulations of large supermassive black holes capturing smaller compact objects. Khanna claims that its performance exceeds that of a 100+ Intel Xeon core based traditional Linux cluster, on his simulations. The PS3 Gravity Grid gathered significant media attention from 2007 through 2010. Khanna also created an instructional website on building such clusters.
On March 28, 2010, Sony announced it would be disabling the PS3’s OtherOS feature, with the v3.21 update, due to security concerns. This update would not affect any existing supercomputing clusters, because they are not connected to PlayStation Network and would not be forced to update. However, it would make replacing the individual consoles that compose the clusters very difficult or impossible, because newer models would be shipped with v3.21. This caused the end of the PS3’s common use for clustered computing, though projects like “The Condor” were still being created with older PS3 units, and have come online after that update.
PS3 cell processor was so amazing that people were building supercomputers with it, it was cheaper that using regular computers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
In mid-2007, Gaurav Khanna, a professor in the Physics Department of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth independently built a message-passing based cluster using eight PS3s running Fedora Linux, named the PS3 Gravity Grid. It was built with support from Sony Computer Entertainment as the first PS3 cluster with published scientific results. It performed astrophysical simulations of large supermassive black holes capturing smaller compact objects. Khanna claims that its performance exceeds that of a 100+ Intel Xeon core based traditional Linux cluster, on his simulations. The PS3 Gravity Grid gathered significant media attention from 2007 through 2010. Khanna also created an instructional website on building such clusters.
On March 28, 2010, Sony announced it would be disabling the PS3’s OtherOS feature, with the v3.21 update, due to security concerns. This update would not affect any existing supercomputing clusters, because they are not connected to PlayStation Network and would not be forced to update. However, it would make replacing the individual consoles that compose the clusters very difficult or impossible, because newer models would be shipped with v3.21. This caused the end of the PS3’s common use for clustered computing, though projects like “The Condor” were still being created with older PS3 units, and have come online after that update.