Article: Red Ribbon RC 7 - GNU / Linux for PS3

[r04drunner]

You can view the page at http://psx-scene.com/forums/content....-Linux-for-PS3

[VSPROD]

nobody thought to take the RSX driver used in hospitals? those PS3 are on linux..

[tthousand]

Never crossed my mind but now that you mention it

[VSPROD]

Never crossed my mind but now that you mention it

so this is sarcastic? or somebody already try it? or nobody has those files?

[STLcardsWS]

PS3 in the hospital? never seen that.

[VSPROD]

Yes I think they use the ps3 for the x-ray or other things because it take less time.. because the ps3 is more powerful than their current machine..

[tthousand]

This is all news to me @VSPROD. I would love some more information on this topic if you have any.

Now all we need is a hacker/doctor, and we are good to go Or at least a nurse, right?

[STLcardsWS]

Well if true, i seriously doubt it would be anything of use for the scene lol.; They would be official firmware on 3.15 or lower using the official way for linux like we had back in the day. There would be no need for them to update their ps3's firmware. Are they logging on to PSN while giving an X-ray to check out some video. or they playing games that require a new firmware ..

Where is this hospital located at?

[nullptr]

Lol! Imagine Sony ban the hospital consoles for using X-Ray processing software while logging on PSN!

But Really I don't think it's practical to use PS3s for such a purpose especially that medical equipment is always on the move (both hardware and software).

I'm really interested to read more about this.

[yes159]

The x-ray stuff is probably this:

PS3 can be used to read x-rays

I dont think it is about any custom or special PS3, probably just a bunch of standard retail PS3s working in a cluster to do heavy calculating. This is all legit, and it would be perfectly fine to log on PSN Of course, there is no need to update the firmware (which they need to do, to be able to log on PSN), and if they do it, they lose OtherOS.

It was not uncommon to PS3 in clusters because it was a cheaper way to get a supercomputer to do heavy calculation. The American Air Force did something similar, they took 1760 PS3 and connected them as a cluster:

US Air Force connects 1,760 PlayStation 3's to build supercomputer

The Condor Cluster project began four years ago, when PlayStation consoles cost about $400 each. At the same time, comparable technology would have cost about $10,000 per unit. Overall, the PS3s for the supercomputer’s core cost about $2 million. According to AFRL Director of High Power Computing Mark Barnell, that cost is about 5-10% of the cost of an equivalent system built with off-the-shelf computer parts.

Someone have speculated in that this is the main reason for the removal of OtherOS, that the PS3 simply made these solutions extremely cheap compared to competing supercomputer hardware. I dont know if that is the case though, since it took about 4 years before it was removed, but who knows, maybe it was one contributed reason for the removal of OtherOS.

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How is Linux running on PS3 now by the way? I never tried it on my 60GB PS3, but i saw videos of Linux running on OtherOS, and it looked really slow. Has this been improved?