US Air Force buys 2,200 PS3's For it's supercomputer
90 replies, posted
[QUOTE=ramblingoxen;18535561]ps3s are a lot stronger than you think they are[/QUOTE]
20kg per arm motherfucker
[QUOTE=evilking1;18535543]Better than PS2 linux... full hardware access but 32mb RAM, ugh... Firefox ran somehow still.[/QUOTE]
PS3 running linux is still not as good as a workstation that $299 can get you now a days
I think it's kind of hard to make fun of the PS3...
Now if they were 2000 360's...
[QUOTE=Gubru;18535700]I think it's kind of hard to make fun of the PS3...
Now if they were 2000 360's...[/QUOTE]
Actually, if there are 2000 Xbox 360s running Linux with full hypervisior privileged mode using the free60 JTAG hack, the performance would be significantly greater than 2000 PS3s, since the Linux is running in the highest privileged available on the hardware, completely unrestricted.
...Of course, if you don't mind putting several air conditioner in that room to prevent failure
[QUOTE=B1N4RY!;18535660]PS3 running linux is still not as good as a workstation that $299 can get you now a days[/QUOTE]
That workstation doesn't run [B]RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDGE RAAAAAAAAACER[/B]
theyre going to build a megazord out of PS3s
[quote]second-fastest, IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s RoadRunner[/quote]
Roadrunner isn't the fastest anymore? That's the biggest news to me all year.
[QUOTE=Larry Daniell;18529313]Wtf is he trying to do that pic?[/QUOTE]
Uninstall Firefox, Format your HDD, Sell your PC, and leave, Leave earth if possible
[QUOTE=ramblingoxen;18535561]ps3s are a lot stronger than you think they are[/QUOTE]
A gtx 295 or 5870 is more powerfull and thats just a graphics card.
^he does have a point which I agrees to
[img]http://www.crack-wpa.fr/forum/img/images/pyrit-wpa-gpu-cracker/pyrit-benchmark-09-09.png[/img]
[QUOTE=ShitBalls;18529069]Why don't they buy an IBM supercomputer?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_%28microprocessor%29#PowerXCell_8i[/url]
Because 2,100 of those working in concert would be just as powerful yet cheaper.
[QUOTE=Madman_Andre;18539611][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_%28microprocessor%29#PowerXCell_8i[/url]
Because 2,100 of those working in concert would be just as powerful yet cheaper.[/QUOTE]
Find the calculated PMKs per second and then compare that to that of a supercomputer.
Gpu's and Cell processors can super fucking number crunch.
But they will never beat a modern computer cpu in multi tasking. Sure you can program the cell it's afterall one ppe and got 6spes it can use, programmed in a good way it can do great thing.
But i want to see dual core cell processors. 2 ppe's a shit load of spe's. A super computer on one single chip.
[QUOTE=shill le 2nd;18533909]PS3s are like mini supercomputers; they have "synergistic processing elements" (six usable ones). Cluster these and you get a cheap supercomputer.
IBM's newest supercomputer is in fact based on the same Cell architecture as the PS3.[/QUOTE]
Other way around, the Cell was developed to be clustered in Supercomputers, it's pretty much a middling point between a normal CPU and the scalar processing units in your graphics card.
This is a clever idea, buying Cell processors on their own would be more expensive, as Sony subsidizes every PS3 sold, so they get a discount. It's just a shame that the RSX chip is based on the NV74, rather than the G8x series of GPUs. Otherwise, they would have gotten an insane deal, because they would have been able to use the GPUPU capabilities of the chips. But, unless you like writing supercomputer programs in pixel shaders, you can't do too much with the NV74 based architecture.
[editline]11:39PM[/editline]
[QUOTE=B1N4RY!;18535827]Actually, if there are 2000 Xbox 360s running Linux with full hypervisior privileged mode using the free60 JTAG hack, the performance would be significantly greater than 2000 PS3s, since the Linux is running in the highest privileged available on the hardware, completely unrestricted.
...Of course, if you don't mind putting several air conditioner in that room to prevent failure[/QUOTE]
I think the US Air Force can get Sony to give them something to remove the hypervisor.
[b]Edit Again:[/b]
You guys don't seem to understand what they select a supercomputer base chip for. The overall performance of each discreet processing unit doesn't matter. What matters is the combined performance of all of them working in parallel on a specific set of instructions that the supercomputer was designed for.
I do, however, wonder how they'll setup the networking of all these PS3 consoles, the best they have is 100Mbit Ethernet, that would get very crowded, very quickly.
[QUOTE=Kagrenak;18540152]
I do, however, wonder how they'll setup the networking of all these PS3 consoles, the best they have is 100Mbit Ethernet, that would get very crowded, very quickly.[/QUOTE]
Pull the CPUs out of the last supercomputer and stick the Cells in their place?
[QUOTE=Madman_Andre;18540334]Pull the CPUs out of the last supercomputer and stick the Cells in their place?[/QUOTE]
Maybe if this were a movie.
[QUOTE=Kagrenak;18540152]Other way around, the Cell was developed to be clustered in Supercomputers, it's pretty much a middling point between a normal CPU and the scalar processing units in your graphics card.
This is a clever idea, buying Cell processors on their own would be more expensive, as Sony subsidizes every PS3 sold, so they get a discount. It's just a shame that the RSX chip is based on the NV74, rather than the G8x series of GPUs. Otherwise, they would have gotten an insane deal, because they would have been able to use the GPUPU capabilities of the chips. But, unless you like writing supercomputer programs in pixel shaders, you can't do too much with the NV74 based architecture.
[editline]11:39PM[/editline]
I think the US Air Force can get Sony to give them something to remove the hypervisor.
[b]Edit Again:[/b]
You guys don't seem to understand what they select a supercomputer base chip for. The overall performance of each discreet processing unit doesn't matter. What matters is the combined performance of all of them working in parallel on a specific set of instructions that the supercomputer was designed for.
I do, however, wonder how they'll setup the networking of all these PS3 consoles, the best they have is 100Mbit Ethernet, that would get very crowded, very quickly.[/QUOTE]
You mean 1000Mbit, but still, bottlenecking is imminent.
Is this really the most practical and reliable way of making a computing cluster for the Air Force of all things? Don't they get enough money to get something decent?
I think the real story here is that InformationWeek doesn't have proofreaders. The first paragraph of their story is a disaster.
[quote]The U.S. Air Force is looking to buy 2,200 Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 game consoles[B] to built out a research supercomputer[/B], according to [B]an document[/B] posted on the federal government's procurement Web site.[/quote]
[QUOTE=laserpanda;18541288]I think the real story here is that InformationWeek doesn't have proofreaders. The first paragraph of their story is a disaster.[/QUOTE]
An document. Is like an hero.
[QUOTE=ShitBalls;18529069]Why don't they buy an IBM supercomputer?[/QUOTE]
Virtual machines maybe 3 or 4 machines to each 1 ps3
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh1jB4hVJRg[/media]
This guy just got some competition..
Anyone else smell some bullshit?
[QUOTE=Larry Daniell;18529313]Wtf is he trying to do that pic?[/QUOTE]
do a 360 and walk away from your computer NOW
They need to start making 2U rackmount PS3's as I have heard of more consoles see use as supercomputers than for gaming.
[QUOTE=evilking1;18534977]Well I thought you were joking but when I saw your name I thought that you were serious.
[/QUOTE]
Yep my name is totally serious.
[quote]The U.S. Air Force is looking to buy 2,200 Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 game consoles to built out a research supercomputer, according to an document posted on the federal government's procurement Web site.
The PlayStation 3s will be used at the Air Force Research Laboratory's information directorate in Rome, N.Y., where they will be added to an existing cluster of 336 PlayStation 3s being used to conduct supercomputing research.
The Air Force will use the system to "to determine the best fit for implementation of various applications," including commercial and internally developed software specific to the PS3's Cell Broadband Engine processor architecture. The research will help the Air Force decide where Cell Broadband Engine processor-derived hardware and software could be used in military systems.
The Air Force has used the cluster to test a method of processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic [b]aperture[/b] radar image formation), high-def video processing, and "neuromorphic computing," or building computers with brain-like properties.
The PlayStation 3's eight-processor Cell powers other supercomputers, including the world's second-fastest, IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s RoadRunner, at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In June, the Department of Defense awarded $2 million for this research under its High Performance Computing Modernization Program, the DOD's arm for supercomputing research, development, test, and evaluation. That follows an initial investment of $118,000 on the original cluster.
Before it won the research award in 2008, the information directorate's advanced computing architectures team considered alternative configurations and the possibility of a hybrid system, but found multicore Xeon servers slower and more expensive than PS3s, and GPGPUs to be slower in some important types of calculations.
The Air Force Research Laboratory's information directorate spends about $700 million annually on R&D, in areas such as collaboration, networking, cybersecurity, and computer modeling.[/quote]
Holy shit
[QUOTE=The DooD;18584826]Holy shit[/QUOTE]
Oh god I found out that my camera has some "aperture" setting do I get cake if I press that.
:downs:
Reminds me of a project someone did when the PS3 first came out. They made a network of PS3s that users could link up to when they weren't playing and had thousands of PS3s running simulations of a cancer cell or something.
My brother did it for a while but it ran his internet and power bill up.
[QUOTE=Bean-O;18587526]Reminds me of a project someone did when the PS3 first came out. They made a network of PS3s that users could link up to when they weren't playing and had thousands of PS3s running simulations of a cancer cell or something.
My brother did it for a while but it ran his internet and power bill up.[/QUOTE]
You mean Folding@Home? It's still up, and a great cause to support. [url]http://folding.stanford.edu/[/url]
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