For the second time running (no pun intended), the Department of Energy's Cell-powered Roadrunner system has once again claimed the top spot in the Top 500 Supercomputers list.

Oh, you'd think the Large Hadron Collider would have made an impact (again, no pun intended) on the list, but nooo, the PS3 chip's advanced - and slightly hybrid-ized - brother is leaving the rest of the competition in the dust.

This one's for everyone who misses the Science blog. So that includes me? *Grin*. Anyway, In case you didn't know, the Large Hadron Collider's atom smasher will start today.

So how would you feel about contributing to the research of the Large Hadron Collider? You know, help destroy the world and everything. I kid. But someday you might be able to contribute to the LHC's research. That part's true. Following in the footsteps of Folding@Home is LHC@Home. Dun dun dunnn.

And a big load of thanks goes to trigger for the tip!

Meep meep. The PlayStation 3's powerful hardware does it again, contributing its powerful Cell Broadband Engine to create the world's fastest supercomputer, er... again. Named the Roadrunner, this new supercomputer runs at speeds exceeding one petaflop - that is, one thousand trillion calculations per second. Let's see Wile E. Coyote try to catch up with that. Watch a mini-documentary of the supercomputer in the full article.

This could be the most credible proof that the PlayStation 3 possesses formidable hardware: IBM's fastest supercomputer to date, Blue Gene/P, is juiced up by the same kind of processing chip that was originally designed for the Sony PS3.

Blue Gene/P is approximately 100,000 more powerful than a PC, just enough to make PlayStation 3 owners feel proud about their powerful machine. IBM's latest supercomputer can run about 1,000 trillion calculations per second, also termed as "petaflops".

Blue Gene/P's predecessor, the Blue Gene/L, is  used to protect nuclear weapons stockpile, and has already reached a calculating speed of 280.6 teraflops or trillions of calculations. "Blue Gene/P marks the evolution of the most powerful supercomputing platform the world has ever known," said Dave Turek, vice president of IBM's deep computing, about Blue Gene/P.

IBM possesses a remarkable supercomputer manufacturing portfolio: they have produced about 50% of existing 500 supercomputers, as well as providing CELL processors for PlayStation 3 and for the Blue Gene/P. IBM also has notable competition in the supercomputing industry with the likes of Sun, maker of the Constellation machines.

The first batch of Blue Gene/P are slated for use at the following institutions: the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, and two unnamed US laboratories.

We've previously reported on Sony's spending on marketing the PS3 to Australian consumers, and given that the European launch is getting closer, here's a look at how PS3 marketing is doing in Europe.

MCV UK reports that Sony Computer Entertainment has begun to roll out its "This is Living" creatives in cinemas and that Sony plans to release TV commercials on March 16th and onwards. An "online push" is also reported to be part of the Marketing Blitz.

SCE UK Marketing Director Alan Duncan notes:

We want to review the emotional relationship between consumers and the PlayStation brand. ...The "This is Living" campaign is designed to promote a rational role for the PS3 in people’s lives. ...My role in life is to make consumers re-appraise what PlayStation means and what role it has in their lives.

The reported goal of the team is to evolve the PlayStation brand from its "gaming roots" to more of an "entertainment supercomputer" As for the use of cryptic advertising that the PlayStation brand has been known for, Duncan notes: "Our ads will never, ever be passive. We want to get people involved."

If you're going to think that this is a negative, Sony-bashing article, then you've passed the fan-boy litmus test. Admit it: no matter how much we appreciate the console, Sony PR just goofs up sometimes. Moreover, it's a whole lot funnier when the foul-ups come from execs. Here are some amusing bits from the King of the Cosmos himself, Ken Kutaragi (Kutaragi Damacy!)

• "The PS3 is not a game machine"
• "Beating us for a short moment is like accidentally winning a point from a Shihan (Karate master), and Microsoft is still not a black belt. Just like with their operating systems, they might come out with something good around the third generation of their release."
• "I believe we made the most beautiful thing in the world. Nobody would criticize a renowned architect’s blueprint that the position of a gate is wrong. It's the same as that."
• "Microsoft shoots for the moon. Sony shoots for the sun."
• "This time, Microsoft has stated clearly that it is going after PlayStation. However, they're going not after the PlayStation 3, but the PlayStation 2. They were looking at 2, and that's why Xbox 360 became like that."
• "With the PS3, our intentions have been to create a machine with supercomputer calculation capabilities for home entertainment."
• PS3 is "for consumers to think to themselves 'I will work more hours to buy one'. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else."
• "The PS3 will instill discipline in our children and adults alike. Everyone will know discipline."
• "Microsoft is trailing behind us, but they are not a threat. They are good at improving [on products], but we will be advancing to the next level with revolutionary technology."
• "We’re not going to equip the PS3 with a HDD by default, because no matter how much capacity we put in it, it won’t be enough."

The full article awaits after the jump!

Not everyone actually listens to the makers about the tech involved in making a console so much as the end result. When Hideo Kojima references IBM's Cell Processor in a version of his Guns of the Patriots trailer, however, then you kinda want to shift focus a bit and keep your eyes peeled for news, if only because Kojima makes non-ninja stealth assassination cool.

So here's the next update on the Cell Processor, and this time, it has very little to do with the PS3 (though it may just be good PR for the darned thing).

In addition to using the Cell as one of the processing chips for the Roadrunner supercomputer, IBM has decided to find another use for their Cell by making it a component in a new model of their blade servers. Dubbed the BladeCenter QS20, it's being marketed as a high-end graphics server.

Currently, BladeCenter QS20 is being used in academic fields, some of which require such heavy-duty servers to take the weight of their projects. The Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics in Germany, for example, will be using it to improve their in-house visual applications, while Britain's University of Manchester intend to use it for their computing needs as it eats up less space and power while upgrading their overall computing performance.

What do you think? Will this be good PR for Sony and the PS3 as well as the IBM, or is it bad news for Sony?

IBM wins the bid to build "Roadrunner", a supercomputer system that will compete (and hopes to outdo) Japan's "Protein Explorer" and its own Blue Gene/L. IBM-Los Alamos will announce the plans as to when the project will officially start, but it's going to be a phase by phase process that begins this September and ends in 2007.

It seems a little off-topic, PS3 fans should start rejoicing. The Roadrunner kicks off a new trend in supercomputing, which relies on "hybrids" to sustain the performance level of a "petaflop," or 1 quadrillion calculations per second. These hybrids are a combination of general-purpose processors and special-purpose accelerator chips. In this case, it's going to be not just Opteron chips, but the Cell processor from Sony's PS3 as well. The Cell processor as we know it was originally designed to improve video game performance in the PlayStation 3 console.

Obviously, this is going to lead us to a futuristic conclusion: With more powerful petaflop-churning supercomputers, there will be greater possibility for more high-speed gaming systems and machines to come out in the future. Also, because the U.S. government has become an avid supercomputer customer, the nuclear simulations will be continuously fueled.

Gaming, as we know it, will never be the same again.