Daily Tech Bits

PS3 Leads To Age Of The Petaflop

What do the Playstation 3 and the world’s fastest computer have in common? Only that they use the same components. IBM’s latest supercomputer, codenamed Roadrunner, will be able to make one thousand trillion calculations per second. It uses both supercomputer chips and the PS3 cell chip to produce these speeds.

According to the BBC, it will be used to keep track of nuclear weapons, but there’s no fun in that for ordinary computer users. It does mean that high performance computers can use this technology to get faster and faster. I wonder when this will trickle down to home computers?

Entertainment Meets Health

No more lying on the couch for our kids. Nintendo is set to launch a new game that will ‘get players off the couch and lead them to stretch, shake and sweat their way to a healthy life.’ Wii Fit is the latest offering for the Wii, which has been a runaway success.

“Wii Fit” coaches players through more than 40 exercises that range from tightrope-walking to yoga stances to push-ups.

The $90 game comes with a shoulder-width “balance board” that senses tiny shifts in a person’s posture and is used to control a cartoonish character on the TV screen.

More than 2 million of these units have been sold in Japan and the European market is growing.  Creator Shigeru Miyamoto says: “I don’t think Wii Fit’s purpose is to make you fit. What it’s actually aiming to do is make you aware of your body.”