I certainly hope its not pointless. Perhaps certain people will reflect, and see the folly of their ways...

Assuming bad faith *is* pointless. It only leads to confrontation, and that's rarely constructive and only slows down progress.

Much better to work with people than against them.

btw, did you contact Dr. Baker? Any news?

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I'm afraid the NIH factor will override everything else.

If another University did it, we can't do it because , well, it's Not Invented Here.

I doubt that. I mean, it's not like Rosetta invented BOINC, yet they have no problem using it.

The first piece of information we would need is: How hard would it be to port the Rosetta code to PS3. As long as that's not known, the rest is speculation. Not all code is as portable.

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Given that Rosetta code was already ported to parallel processing on the IBM BlueGene supercomputer, in theory the code should port to the parallel processing on the Sony PS3.

I would suggest that the first question that needs to be answered is whether or not the limited ram available within the Sony PS3 would be a limiting factor.

Once you answer this question in the negative, then proceed to inquire about the effort to port over to the PS3.

Also remember, this also would yield additional benefits: The Sony PS3 utilizes the Cell BE cpu, as do highend IBM / Mercury blades.

So a port for the PS3 would also work on these blades, offering the opportunity for yet another high performance platform to donate cpu cycles.

There are a lot of pluses for investigating, AND COMMUNICATING, this possibility.

The first piece of information we would need is: How hard would it be to port the Rosetta code to PS3. As long as that's not known, the rest is speculation. Not all code is as portable.

IBM BladeCenter QS20 blade features:

Two 3.2 GHz Cell BE processors
1 GB XDRAM (512 MB per processor)
410 GFLOPS peak performance
Blade-mounted 40 GB IDE hard disk drive
Two 1 Gb Ethernet (GbE) controllers that provide connectivity to the BladeCenter chassis midplane and BladeCenter GbE switches
BladeCenter interface that offers Blade Power System and Sense Logic Control
Double-wide blade (uses two BladeCenter slots)
InfiniBand (IB) option, supporting up to two Mellanox IB 4x Host Channel Adapters (External IB switches are required for the IB option.)
Peak performance of 2.8 TFLOPS in a standard single-chassis configuration, and over 17 TFLOPS may be possible in a standard 42U rack (There is a maximum of seven blades per chassis. Each Cell BE blade requires two slots. Cell BE blades should not be intermixed with other blades within a chassis.)

For ordering, contact:

Your IBM representative or IBM Americas Call Centers at 800-IBM-CALL (Reference: YE001).



18,995 USD for a QS20 blade running Fedora Core 5 Linux ?!

How many PS3's could you purchase for that price ???!!!

From Doc Baker's UW student newspaper:

“The benefit to using the PS3 is that people use their computers a larger amount of the time than their PS3, allowing the PS3 more time and processing power to contribute,” Lao wrote in an e-mail."

Also, Sony PS3 seen leading hardware growth in 2008:

PlayStation 3 will double its installed base this year, posting the strongest growth of any video game console and narrowing the gap with rivals, research firm iSuppli said on Thursday.

And, of course, Xbox failure rate is around 16 per cent and rising:

A REPORT from a warranty firm Square Trade reckons that the XBox 360 failure rate is running at 16.4 per cent.

Some retailers have complained that the failure rate is as high as 33 per cent, while the Vole reckons it's closer to three or four per cent.

EDIT --> Oooops, almost forgot this (yes, my two PS3's "Ralphie" and "Rosie" are a part of this)

Sony Announces 1 Million Folding@home Users

Sony has announced that over one million PlayStation 3 users have registered to participate in Stanford University's Folding@home project since its launch on March 7th, 2007 -- according to the company, this equates to about 3,000 PS3 owners registering per day, or 2 new registered users every minute worldwide.

Talking about affordability and installed base... Are you listening Project Staff ?!


New PS3 price cut expected this year

Research firm expects Wii owners to buy a PS3 for Christmas

Research company iSuppli has stated its belief that Sony will push through another price cut for the PlayStation 3 at some point during this year, leading up to a big Christmas for the console.

Analyst Pamela Tufegdzic told Reuters: "We anticipate Sony will have another price slash on the PS3 this year, and come Christmas, consumers who originally bought the Wii will likely purchase the PS3."

...

However, Sony has stated that it expects manufacturing costs to fall below sales prices this year, a move which might prompt the company to ponder a price point change.

Let's shift gears a little, and look at the engine underneath the hood of the PS3, its a Cell BE processor.

Let's see what would have happened if the effort had been made to code for this.

Well, first you'd have an installed base of millions (and growing) of PS3's.

Second, you'd have the same cpu in the IBM QS20 and QS21 BladeCenters. No slouches there.

AND NOW, Toshiba is introducing a Cell based, 10-20 watt, 1.5 GHz quad-core, called SpursEngine for embedded devices.

The missed opportunities just keeps growing and growing.

But not to worry too much. Projects like Folding@Home, PS3Grid, Yoyo@Home, etc. are all stepping up to the plate.

Toshiba expects sales of 6 million units within the first three years of the SpursEngine’s release.

Don't know how I missed this from the news about two months ago...

IBM shrinks Cell to 45nm. Cheaper PS3s will follow

The 45nm Cell will use about 40 percent less power than its 65nm predecessor

The power savings was pretty significant in going from the original 90nm to current 65nm, and I guess we're seeing it yet again !!!

Any news on a port to Ps3 yet ?
I've just bought one and would love to use it to crunch for rosetta

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Seems like we have two almost identical threads on this topic...

Here's the best answer to your question.

In the interim, consider either Folding@Home or PS3Grid, or perhaps Yoyo@Home's OGR wrapper. IMHO, all worthy projects.