Brilliant piece. The juxtaposition of consumer gaming hardware solving astrophysics problems really underscores how arbitrary the distinction between 'toy' and 'scientific instrument' can be. What I find most interesting is that NCSA didnt need permission or partnerships, they just bought retail consoles. That democratization of compute power, where $50k could rival multimillion dollar setups, foreshadowed distributed computing in ways we take for granetd now. Back when I was doing grad research we actually considred using PS3s for simulations but ended up goin with AWS instead.
Thanks for the insight! It's not something I'd normally write about, but I found it just too interesting to pass up. The fact that you even considered PS3s is so fascinating.
So interesting! Love the idea of 90s parents buying their kid a PS2 to play Spyro or whatever without realizing that they just handed their 9 year old a supercomputer capable of doing this.
Ahh this is wild! And you’ve reminded me of Folding@Home which I LOVED (but don’t think my parent’s electricity bill loved quite so much…) it was thrilling to me that my PS3 could help fold proteins for science. 🤯
Deeply fascinating. I’ve genuinely never heard of this story before or the rumours around the PS2’s computing prowess at the time. But these kinds of stories are always going to be cool to me. Great read!
Thank you friend! I agree. I love the whole utilitarian aspect of it. I'm a big fan of projects that punch above their weight or circumstances. Thanks for reading. 🙂
I love hearing stories of computer history, and the ingenuity behind them. I do remember hearing of the supercomputer capabilities of the PS2, though a lot of it could have just been marketing hype. These days you would find other ways of doing the same thing, like combine hundreds of Raspberry Pi's together.
It just shows that if you say it can't be done, someone will prove you wrong.
Brilliant piece. The juxtaposition of consumer gaming hardware solving astrophysics problems really underscores how arbitrary the distinction between 'toy' and 'scientific instrument' can be. What I find most interesting is that NCSA didnt need permission or partnerships, they just bought retail consoles. That democratization of compute power, where $50k could rival multimillion dollar setups, foreshadowed distributed computing in ways we take for granetd now. Back when I was doing grad research we actually considred using PS3s for simulations but ended up goin with AWS instead.
Thanks for the insight! It's not something I'd normally write about, but I found it just too interesting to pass up. The fact that you even considered PS3s is so fascinating.
So interesting! Love the idea of 90s parents buying their kid a PS2 to play Spyro or whatever without realizing that they just handed their 9 year old a supercomputer capable of doing this.
Ahh this is wild! And you’ve reminded me of Folding@Home which I LOVED (but don’t think my parent’s electricity bill loved quite so much…) it was thrilling to me that my PS3 could help fold proteins for science. 🤯
I know, right?! Do you remember Life with PlayStation? If we weren’t folding for science we’d have that running in the background. 🌍
https://open.substack.com/pub/pspolygons/p/remembering-life-with-playstation?r=15yzx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Oh damn, yes I do remember that. 😅 I miss these random additions to consoles. More of this!
Deeply fascinating. I’ve genuinely never heard of this story before or the rumours around the PS2’s computing prowess at the time. But these kinds of stories are always going to be cool to me. Great read!
Thank you friend! I agree. I love the whole utilitarian aspect of it. I'm a big fan of projects that punch above their weight or circumstances. Thanks for reading. 🙂
I love hearing stories of computer history, and the ingenuity behind them. I do remember hearing of the supercomputer capabilities of the PS2, though a lot of it could have just been marketing hype. These days you would find other ways of doing the same thing, like combine hundreds of Raspberry Pi's together.
It just shows that if you say it can't be done, someone will prove you wrong.