US Air Force creating supercomputer made of PlayStation 3s

US Air Force creating supercomputer made of PlayStation 3s

The United States Air Force Research Laboratory has ordered 2,000 PlayStation 3s, with the intention of creating a supercomputer by harnessing the processing power of the collective group.

Defense-owned news source Stars and Stripes stating that the US Air Force has commissioned a supercomputer comprised of 2,000 PlayStation 3s. The $2 million project will also utilize an "off-the-shelf" graphics processor to create a supercomputer "nearly 100,000 times faster than high-end computer processors sold today," according to Stars and Stripes.

This isn't the first time that a Sony video game console has been linked to a military power. About ten years ago, Sony's PlayStation 2 was rumored to have been purchased en masse by the Iraq in order to build a supercomputer for military purposes. And you wonder why we couldn't find "weapons of mass destruction" over there...

More details here at Stars and Stripes;
Turning PlayStations into power stations

C'mon Big Blue, you gonna take this lying down?

According to Gizmodo this has nothing to do with the release of "COD: Black Ops".

at a 1ooo bucks a piece whole sale...
maybe they should just stick to learning how to use a calculator first.

what are they going to use as the operating system?
Vice City ?

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Well I hope they get charged for modifying them like this poor student..

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Danbones




2nd line

reply to post by Danbones


Its possible to run certain flavors of linux on a ps3
Fedora core is one

Originally posted by Danbones

what are they going to use as the operating system?
Vice City ?

Try Google Earth

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer

According to Gizmodo this has nothing to do with the release of "COD: Black Ops".

This is kinda old news. Maybe they were preparing for the release of "MW2"...

MOTF!

This is so old it isn't funny, in fact this from 2008

gizmodo.com...
www.joystiq.com...

This is just to sell Ps3's, there are much more powerful computers than Ps3 out there these days, it might have held true in 2006 or 7 but right now our PC's have far exceeded the Ps3's power.

This story is probably to sell more Ps3's.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Wow, I also remember upon initially PS3 release there were rumors it could be reconstructed to be a working guidance system for a missile or something of that nature.

Here's the original source for this;

Defense Department is using PlayStation consoles to create supercomputer

... that the Sony consoles will create a supercomputer nearly 100,000 times faster than high-end computer processors sold today.

Seriously? It's also said Iran has bought a large number of these and AMD chips. Nice to know that our multi-billion defense budget has kept us so far ahead of Iran - or maybe not.

reply to post by Segador


That's actually an unrelated story

This has been done since the release of the playstation. Several students have built clusters that far exceeded a lot of supercomputers in speed. Chips from these could be used for Missile navigation and it has rumored that the purchase of a huge amount of these chips that were initially produced for the PS actually delayed shipment of the PS.

I believe that certain initiatives were used to spider and also to create rainbow tables. It's a shame that these ideas are usually from hackers that just want to stretch the boundaries of their hardware, then stolen/used by the military.

And now we see corporations crack down on the little guy for modifying his own property. Has been predicted for years, next you know a part of your belongings are still partly owned by a huge corporation.

Reminds me of the story that Saddam in 2000 was buying PS2 units to use their chips for military hardware purposes.

Story

The Clinton administration eventually wants to see the removal of hardware controls on computer exports to countries including China and India. Restrictions on countries considered terrorist threats--including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Cuba and North Korea--would remain intact.

However, Iraq already has figured out how to get around the restrictions. Followers of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein reportedly bought 1,400 PlayStation 2 units last year with the intent of developing a military system with the chips they contain. The gaming machines aren't subject to the same export rules as computers.

Okay so what are the backdoors into the Sony Playstation? C'mon there's got to be some cheat codes built in here.

... But can it run Crysis?

Originally posted by backinblack
reply to post by Blackmarketeer

 

Well I hope they get charged for modifying them like this poor student..

www.abovetopsecret.com...

LOL!................. I was wondering if microsoft was gonna go
after the Air Force now. That is just too funny.

The Air Force is not competent in procuring computers.

They buy lots of big clunky 1990's tower computers to sit on desks sucking 450watts of power+ for people that only need to type letters and crunch numbers. Maybe open a pdf file here and there or click thru virtual training power point slides.

They could have bought those micro box pc's that suck 60 watts of power or less and accomplished the same goal.

Plus they could have saved millions in energy costs annually and maybe used the savings to buy a couple planes.

The Air Force is an inefficient user of energy and computers.

Is this system going to be able to run faster than Chuck Norris?
"second line"

Linux support has been removed for awhile now since firmware 3.14....

Unless you jailbreak the PS3

What?? Are they dumb? Thats tax money, they've bought these PS3s at more that double the price!! For no reason! Let me tell you what they're doing. They don't really need 2000 PS3s. They only need 800-1000. They are going to take some of those PS3s give them to family as an X-mas gift, keep one for themselves, for those who want one and sell the rest for $200 flat, check Ebay around X-mas. That's where they'll be.