Terra Soft to Enable HPC Clustering of PS3s
Set to launch Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 for Sony's Playstation 3 later today, it seems Terra Soft Solutions has gone one step further in their commitment to the Playstation 3 and the architecture that powers it; browsing Terra Soft's online offerings, astute observers will note that Terra Soft currently has plans in the works to actually begin selling Playstation 3 consoles with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed.
One of the primary targets of such a move could be private individuals interested in a 'full featured' Playstation console, but uncomfortable with the idea of installing the Linux partition and OS themselves. Yet perhaps even more likely, the target may in fact be corporate customers interested in the power and resources latent in the console, but put-off by the idea of dealing with game vendors and Linux self-installation as being the sole means of acquisition.
Whatever the case, Terra Soft has put forth an intriguing proposition to entice just such a clientele...
In a bold move with the potential to significantly lower the cost of entry for would-be HPC Cell users, Terra Soft is indicating that they will soon offer full PS3 HPC clustering support for interested customers via their Y-HPC 2.0 management suite. Used in the creation of Sony's own Cell-based supercompute clusters, and recently demonstrated at the Supercomputing '06 industry show on both IBM and Mercury Cell-based blades, Y-HPC 2.0 supports heterogenous and cross-architectural node imaging and creation with a focus on Cell integration. Current support includes Intel x86, AMD Opteron, Apple G3-G5, IBM's JS20/JS21, p5, and QS20 offerings, Mercury's Cell blade, and Sony's Playstation 3.
The potential is clear; customers seeking to add or experiment with Cell in their compute clusters could do so as easily as by purchasing a Playstation 3 and integrating it through Y-HPC. With a per cluster licensing fee of ~$4000, and a per node licensing fee of ~$200, a Y-HPC 2.0 managed cluster has the option of adding Cell into the mix at a probable cost of under $1000 per node - a significant savings over the larger tin offered by IBM and Mercury that will likely appeal to HPC operations running on smaller budgets.
Though what this initiative may mean for Terra Soft, for Playstation 3, and for Cell in general won't be known until 2007 at the earliest (when the software begins shipping), one thing is for certain: if you are one of those that has ever dreamed of creating your own supercomputing cluster out of video gaming consoles, your time has come