PS3 clusters are limited in supercomputing tasks largely by RAM, each PS3 having 256MB which is anemic.
I can think of a ton of number crunching you can do where each node having 256 wouldn’t be awful. Like maybe brute forcing stuff where they can just segment the use case to each node. But it would certainly be a specialized case.
>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.
>Another advantage of the PS3-based supercomputer is its energy efficiency: it consumes just 10% of the power of comparable supercomputers.
I wonder how significant the cost and energy savings were by the time the project was finished, and how long the cluster was actually used.
[0]https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...