News: Buy a PS3… help save humanity?

There have been quite a few distributed computing projects over the years. Sony’s plan is perhaps the most ambitious yet. The PS3 has a Cell Broadband Engine (CBE) chip, the same used in IBM’s new supercomputer. PS3 owners will be able to download a small program to their PS3 to allow scientists to use the PS3’s downtime for scientific research, turning what would previously have taken years to calculate into mere months, or less! Don’t worry though, if the PS3 is running a game, the distributed computing process is suspended so you don’t get any lag, thereby causing you to get fragged.

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