James Delahunty
15 Sep 2009 1:18
Academics at the University of Warwick have taken advantage of the Xbox 360 GPU chip's parallel processing abilities to crunch data as part of scientific study. The Warwick team harnessed a single Xbox 360 Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) to model how electrical signals in the heart moved around damaged cardiac cells. It is an example of how technology being used for gaming can also be used to perform functions vital to modern research at a fraction of the cost.
The PlayStation 3's technology has also been used by researchers to build powerful number-crunching clusters for relatively low costs. Dr Simon Scarle, a researcher on the team, a researcher on the Warwick team, previously worked as a software engineer a Microsoft's Rare studio, which enabled him to tap into the power of GPU technology.
"You don't quite get the full whammy of a cluster, but its close," he said. "Instead of pumping out stunning graphics, it's reworked; in the case of my research, rather than calculating the position of a structure and texture it's now working out the different chemical levels in a cell."
He believes it is the first time that such a project has been carried out with chips from the Xbox 360. He believes that it is entirely possible to link many Xbox's together, in a similar way that has been done with the PS3. "It could be done, but you would have to go over the internet - through something like Xbox live - rather than a standard method," he said.
Sony has been doing this online for some time now, with the Folding@Home software coming as standard.