The PS3 cluster
Written by IT News on 5:57 PM
That is why researchers at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, decided to invest in a more unconventional computer, Sony's PlayStation 3. Researchers connected about 16 consoles together, at an estimated total price of a bit over $ 6000. With this rig, they could run tens of simulations on the vibration of black holes and put so many variables that they wanted in the process.
What makes this so cost-effectively possible for the two universities is the fact that if such a solution had not thought of that, they would have paid $ 5000 per simulation at various supercomputer labs. And it goes without saying that a couple dozen simulations would have required significant investment.
"You can build a cluster like this for maybe $ 6000, and then you can run the simulation as many times as you want at no extra cost. Science budgets have been sharply declining over the past decade. Here is one way that people can do science projects cheaper ", says the manufacturer of the PS3 cluster, Gaurav Khanna, a physics professor at the University of Massachusetts.
"Think of a clock. Bell rings, but in the end it will be quiet. The energy that goes out with sound waves is energy clock loses. A black hole does exactly that in the gravitational constant waves instead of sound waves. The black hole that WOBBLING emitting gravitational constant waves. When these vibrations OUT you get a quiet black hole "concluded University of Alabama assistant physics professor, Dr. Lior Burko.
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