Scientists Write Guide to Build Supercomputer from Sony Playstation 3

Anyone else thinking national security here?
You don't want 13 year old hackers or other wrong doers having the blue prints for supercomputers.

There is a much simpler way of preventing online hacking.

Use a "physical" locking mechanism in combination with a logon id and password, much like the "code cylinders" in Star Wars.


I have in my pocket a USB "Jump Drive" which is already several years old, yet it can store 64megabytes.

Here is what we do. When a network user logs in for the first time, they choose their own personal login and "password"(ideally 10-25 digits). In addition, they type a "seed" paragraph of 255 characters. The computer uses this "seed" plus one of like 10 algorithms the user chooses to generate a "randomized" string of characters to generate 64 megabytes of text which is stored on the Jump Drive and used as a second "password". This password is also encrypted and stored on the server.

Now, in order to log in, they must type their login, manual password AND load the 64megabyte code from the jump drive.


Nothing short of a Quantum Computer could ever possibly break this.

Consoles are usually sold at a loss, and recouped through lucrative video games. If everyone gets on this bandwagon, isn't Sony losing out? There has to be a catch.

Consoles are usually sold at a loss, and recouped through lucrative video games. If everyone gets on this bandwagon, isn't Sony losing out? There has to be a catch.

ROFL!!!!!!!!

Nah, you know they're in there playing Crysis between simulations.

Anyone else thinking national security here?
You don't want 13 year old hackers or other wrong doers having the blue prints for supercomputers. The ability to decrypt security codes is probably the primary concern.
Perhaps it will just push encryption from 128 and 256 bit to a higher level.
For the research community it is profound e.g. folding@home.

Corban: My thoughts exactly. The PS3 has been termed a "failure" even though it is selling *more* consoles per unit of time than the Xbox360. The main difference? Each Xbox has a huge number of games being sold with it, on average, whereas very few games are being sold per PS3. Games are where all the money comes from.

The main reason why this plan is even feasible is because Sony is taking a big loss on every console sold, which means that these people can buy PS3 hardware for a fraction of the price that they'd pay for regular computing hardware. (Because hardware companies depend on hardware sales for profit, and can't sell them at a loss.)

If a large number of consoles were to be sold for this use it would be a colossal financial disaster for Sony.

What is probably lacking are the tools to use the 'big iron' of super computers. For the most part, these will probably be used for video renderings not so much simulations... unless someone here can tell us of a tool(s) that allows us to build, for example, complex chemical, physical, architectural, etc. simulations that would require super computing. In the meantime, Folding at Home should benefit greatly I'd think...