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.

As expected, it's another week filled with downloadable goodies from Sony as the latest update for the PlayStation Store hits PSN subscribers in the North American region. This week sees the arrival of the much awaited Bionic Commando Rearmed, as well as other interesting downloadable content. Check out the complete list in our full article.

Roadrunner Records has announced that three more DragonForce tracks are being prepared for release for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ports of Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. Details on the new tracks are available in the full article.

Not everyone has the know-how to learn the ins and outs of the Cell processor and the powers it's got, so for those people hoping to make some new apps for the PS3, WITHOUT having to go through the drudgery of reading up on the Cell, then you're in luck.

Two companies are teaming up to make a development kit that specializes in making Cell-based applications. According to the agreement between RapidMind and Terra Soft, RapidMind will be providing an evaluation version of their RapidMind Development Platform v2.0 for distribution on Terra Soft's YDL.net Enhanced accounts.

The RapidMind Development Platform will enable users to make programs and applications for all Cell-based hardware, which not only includes Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3, but other products from big companies like IBM and Sony. In other words, what they're bringing out won't just be for making PS3 apps. Serious programmers working on things like the Blade Center graphics server or the Roadrunner supercomputer would presumably be able to use the devkit to make their own programs.

Time will tell if this little partnership will work out. We're hoping it will though, mostly because we're waiting for a budding developer to release a PS3 version of Ponies and Kittens. Hardcore baby, hardcore.

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.