or you could not be a tard and get it done with 1 IBM blade server. Or just a hand full of AMD quad-cores running in a cluster.

but then again lets go over what you can spend your near 90 some thousand dollars on.

1. Mercedes Benz

2. A nice decent house

3. a college education

4. few hundred gaming PC's

5. Healthcare for a year.

6. A trip around the world

7. seek professional help for even thinking of wasting over 90k on an experiment that you wouldn't even know how to preform correctly. Just to satisfy you warp sense of finding a use of the PS3 other then doorstop or paperweight.

There you have 7 other things you could spend your 90k on other then buying 200 PS3 for an experiment on the fail boat.

 Reply

Your logic is flawed.

You have yet to answer how the IBM Blade, the AMD Opterons and AMD Phenoms (Since you mentioned Quad Cores) are able to do it better than 200 potentially Beowulf Clustered PS3s (200 Cells). For that matter, you have failed to look at the plausibility that this is an experiment to see just how powerful an everyday common machine can run if clustered via Beowulf and other methods.

By your logic, I can run a few Intel i8 processors in tandem, but you're obviously missing the point that these are everyday casual machines that you find in the living room. It's just as impressive to me if it were 600 XBox 360s!

What's retarded to me is that you fail to see how this is an interesting experiment. Sure, we can get Cray supercomputers and potentially do the same thing, but the element missing there is that everyone expect it from something that is labeled as a "Supercomputer".

They don't expect it from clustered videogame consoles.

And with DoD (and it's subordinate branches) investing in similar experimentations with Cell, I'm not the only one finding that it is worth seeing the potential of what this processor is capable of.

 Reply

Ya need to build those bridges quicker.

 Reply

Sadly this was a waste of time and nothing more then a media stunt for Sony fanboys. Only reason what I say this is because a standard AMD quad-core computer could of done the same thing. Also 1 IBM blade system could do this. if you want to go to more laymen terms.. could of used 200 Apple desktops to do it in half the time or 100 AMD based pc's in a BSD cluster to do it in an eighth of the time.

Tried of Sony and their fanboys trying to win people over with bullshit stunts that make no sense. When standard computer from HP you can get at any Best Buy store would do the work load of half the PS3 used in the experiment.

 Reply

The cell is excellent at this kind of crunching, which is why it was used. Note that this research was performed by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland who are ranked the world's 18th university in the field of "Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences"... but apparently you believe this university is actually "Sone and their fanboys".

But hey, compared with the researchers at the EPFL you're quite the expert with computer hardware and number crunching. You should give them a call.

 Reply

As far as the MD5 crack, it is still a legitimate experiment that is carried out, since there are still security firms that still have not upgraded to more secure methods (yet). If nothing else, it throws more variables to start testing the feasibility of cracking other methods. A reasonable person would never start from top to bottom, so why would they?

And the idea of 200 cells = to 4 AMD QCs is quite rediculous. Regardless of if they were Opterons or Phenoms, you're failing to put into account of their method of handling calculations. You've also failed to reach the conclusion that by using a "Beowulf Cluster", like what DoD has done with their PS3 experiments, that 200 Cells harnessed would make the Opteron and Phenom-based QCs look like childsplay in comparison. Don't believe me? Talk to the folks at Natick. They explain it better than anyone else on here could.

As for the "fanboy stunt", you might as well throw the United States Government in there too, since they are also experimenting with multiple Cell processors at once. I just mentioned one group using it, The United States Air Force being another, with the United States Army also looking to experiment with multiple Cell processors for a Future Combat Systems concept being shopped around at a few expos recently.

Gimmick? Please. Until you are able to substantiate what you are claiming, it would be wise to remember that there are others that may know a thing or two about those "gimmicks".

...and this is coming from a person that is highly critical of Sony as of late.

 Reply

and over 90k to blow on something dumb

 Reply

Security based research, like other forms of research are a valued necessity in today's world. It might be 90k wasted to you, but it saves others billions of dollars, when it exposes the potential problems in hash algorithms.

It would be a matter of time till it becomes feasible to recreate in other methods when technology advances us further ahead. 200 PS3s today, tomarrow....?

 Reply