Air Force builds huge supercomputer by linking 1,760 PlayStation 3s

[RamboLiberal]

Source: USA Today

Air Force researchers have created the defense department's largest interactive supercomputer by linking 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3s, the Air Force Times reports.

Moreover, says the director of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, the linkup forms the 35th fastest computer in the world.

Research director Mark Barnell says the lab spent about $2 million, or about one tenth the cost of using traditional computer equipment, to build the "Condor Cluster."

"We're striving hard to make affordable and constrained systems, where they can really use them and make a difference," he told reporters earlier this month.

The new Condor Cluster will be used to process high-resolution satellite images and boost surveillance capabilities, the Times reports.



Read more: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/12/air-force-builds-huge-supercomputer-by-linking-1760-playstation-3s/1

[wtmusic]

1. Now every servicemember can play Super Mario Bros. at the same time nt

[petronius]

2. Not a bad idea - instead of war, opposing countries or groups can settle

things in a massive multi-player game of Call of Duty or something. Gamers would be our new war heroes, and South Korea would become the world's largest superpower overnight... :)

[earcandle]

12. I am down with this!

[lildreamer316]

21. Richard Bach had an idea like this in one of his books..

although he had it as active war games..air competitons and such. Which is why I was so excited to see the Air Racing (Red Bull) take off so well in real life. In Bach's book, the real Air Forces could not keep their pilots because they would make more money in the entertainment world playing the competition games against other countries (think NFL salaries); and etc. Great concept.

[Tempest]

15. Wrong console

Mario Brothers is Nintendo.

However, they will be playing God of War.

[Norrin Radd]

17. That's Nintendo.

[SpiralHawk]

3. "One day the Condor will fly with the Eagle." - Turtle Island Wisdom Keepers

[AlphaCentauri]

4. Wikileaks could use that technology

[Downwinder]

5. It is probably already leaked to them.

[Occulus]

23. The idea's been around for quite a while now

There's nothing to leak; there are research labs around the world doing this exact thing.

It's actually a very good use of grant/tax dollars to get the most bang for the buck. Four to eight PS3s make a passable supercomputer. That's nothing to sneeze at when you're on a limited budget, but need some serious processing power.

The current generation of consoles are some very powerful computers comparatively speaking. It's nice to see a gaming console being applied in such a serious way.

[greiner3]

6. By my calculations;

1760 Playstation 3s multiplied by $300 (the retail price on Google)=@500,000. At that quantity I could get maybe a 25% discount. The Air Force probably paid 25% more. I am just joking, it was more like 40% more.

At half million for the cores, the extra cost was for the hardware to connect them together. I wonder what OS they used? Joke's on them if it is any flavor of Windows. Probably Linux.

I did a report recently that looked into using GPU power instead of CPU power. The performance was greater than what is reported here, however, the cost was greater because the NVidia cores were newer than Playstation 3s. The NVidia name for this is CUDA and id you have an 8800 or greater video card from them you too have the technology I speak of. the only program I use to run CUDA is called SETI-Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence-a sub program running on BOINC. BOINC is an open-source software platform for computing using volunteered resources.

Sorry to go off topic.

[Lucky Luciano]

7. GPU power is by definition great for graphics.

I heard one of the problems for numerical computations is that GPUs only have float precision arithmetical abilities. If that is so, can't someone write a program so that the GPU can glue a few mor ebytes together to make a proper double or long double precision calculation? Or is there too much overhead with that which makes an ordinary CPU better for numerically precise calculations?

[fatbuckel]

8. You know there`s a CPU in PS3s as well,right?

[Lucky Luciano]

9. of course there is, but I was curious about how to harness the GPU power which is super fast. nt

[nyy1998]

10. They definitly got a discount, economies of scale for both Sony and the AF

[Statistical]

26. They would get no discount.

Sony sells PS3 at a loss. They sell them at a loss because they get $15 to $20 from a game developer for each game sold.

So lifecycle of Ps3 buyer.

Ps3. Sold at $50 to $100 loss.
10 games. $150 to $200 in royalties.
-------------
total profit is positive.

AF cluster
PS3. Sold at $50 loss
0 games $0 in royalties
----------------
total profit is negative.

Sony isn't going to dig a deeper hole.

[Llewlladdwr]

11. Too bad this capability was disabled by firmware update 3.21.

Sony removed the ability to load other operating systems with that update back around April.

[fatbuckel]

13. They would`nt want us to make a supercomputer.

[Norrin Radd]

16. LOL

I suppose it's okay for them to illegally jailbreak the PS3?

[Occulus]

24. Jailbreaking isn't illegal anymore, if it ever was.

It's very possible to void the warranty and violate the EULA, though. I could care less; I stopped considering myself bound by EULAs back when they became incomprehensible legal documents dozens of pages long.

[tomm2thumbs]

14. no wonder poor little Timmy's mom couldn't find him one for Xmas (sigh) /nt

[rug]

18. Uh-oh.

[PavePusher]

19. "Would you like to play... tic-tac-toe?"

"How about Global Thermo-Nuclear Warfare?"

[AsahinaKimi]

20. Why does this remind me of that movie with

Matthew Broderick?

[struggle4progress]

22. US Air Force connects 1,760 PlayStation 3's to build supercomputer (2 Dec)

December 2, 2010 by Lisa Zyga

The Condor Cluster consists of 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3's, and is the US Department of Defense's fastest interactive computer ...

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html

[Statistical]

25. Just so other people know this isn't exactly new or revolutionary.

Colleges have been doing this for decades. It is called super computer on the cheap.
Virginia Tech build a PS2 (remember that old thing) cluster back in 2000, and at some point built a Xbox 360 super computing cluster.

Good to see the AF saves $18 million though compared to a traditional high performance cluster.

The only "downside" to game system clusters is they are limited in effective size. The interconnects are relatively slow thus performance begins to stall above certain number of nodes.

You can build a 50,000 CPU super computing cluster but nobody will ever build a 50,000 game system cluster. Also the console companies tend to disprove of this. They sell game systems at a loss and make it up on games. Clusters never buy games so it is a net loss for console (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) companies.

[miyazaki]

28. Nintendo actually profited per unit on the Wii console. n/t

[Buns_of_Fire]

27. Warning! Warning!

:freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: + :freak: = :nuke: ?

:scared: