Forget You, US Air Force wants PS3’s

[Sega DogTagz]

Being an Air Force man, I like to keep up with the military news. When my buddy told me of this rumor he had heard, I thought he was just screwing with me. Turns out Yahoo! Got the scoop on it, and I find the situation pretty amusing.

Air Force to use PS3’s to simulate the human brain

With all the big budget rources of the US military, the Air Force is actually just rigging up a ton of PS3’s together. As it turns out, for the necessary amount of computing power, it is cheaper to horde PS3’s than to build a supercomputer (yes, even with that price tag).

The scary thing about it, is some of the things they hope to achieve as a result.

“In a general sense, we are interested in making it autonomous."

WAT?!

Will the coming of Skynet be heralded by the Sony console?

Just a funny spot of news I found and wanted to see what you all thought about it.

I wonder if this kind of thing makes an impact on the console sales figures?

Update:

I did some research into the process, and it seems that it is actually more about Sony's Cell Processor. It is apparently invaluable when it comes to HD video processing. Converting radar images to hi-res composite images.

Sony's tagline "it only does everything" might be more accurate than we give it credit for.

Edited February 1, 2010 by Sega DogTagz

[Badnik Mechanic]

I remember reading about this a few weeks ago. Remember that rumour that Sadam bought 200 PS2's to do something similar? Looks like the USAF actually wants to do it at long last.

It does make you wonder if the PS3 will get an actual comercial mass processing application. It's already got Folding at Home which isn't reall mass processing, but it does prove that people will use their PS3's for something that isn't gaming. The BBC did something with PC's a few years ago, they tried to make a climate model using home PC's all over the UK (and the world?).

I've done a few 'foldings' on my PS3, it's quite satisfying, especially when the music plays and you watch the DNA sequence unfold. Maybe we should make an SSMB group?

[Tornado]

I think they are doing it because it is cheaper to string together a few PS3s and take a minor performance cut instead of buying dedicated Cell processor clusters (iirc, the PS3s cost a quarter as much but come within 70% or so of the performance). They actually did this back in late August-early September, because they needed phat PS3s to do it.

Edit:

It was November.

I don't know why Yahoo is so late to the game with this, but I'm seeing it posted everywhere again.

Edited February 1, 2010 by Tornado

[Sega DogTagz]

I find it weird that they don't even dismantle the things. From all the photos, it just looks like they are stringin' them together. I'm not much of a tech guy, but I would think that they could get some more horsepower out of it if they took it apart and make a machine more dedicated to the process with the parts.

Eh, I wonder how involved Sony is in this anyway.

Edited February 1, 2010 by Sega DogTagz

[Blacklightning]

I'm not much of a tech guy, but I would think that they could get some more horsepower out of it if they took it apart and make a machine more dedicated to the process with the parts.

I'm pretty sure that would void their warranty. Which would mean paying more money if one or more of them happens to go kaput.

[Tornado]

For raw number crunching, which is how most cluster computers are used anyways, the Cell processor is fantastic; so there really doesn't need to be any changes made if you can set up a proper interconnect.

Edited February 1, 2010 by Tornado