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US Air Force buys 2200 Playstation 3's for supercomputer - Page 3

post #31 of 36
12/3/09 at 10:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by squid+ View Post
Actually, I recall reading that production costs were $400 at the start of 2008 and earlier this year down to around $200. They haven't been losing that much money for some time already.
Wow really? $200 for production costs is amazing compared to what it was estimated to be at launch. If that is the case the wii must be around $75 .

What kind of simulations are they running with these?
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post #32 of 36
12/3/09 at 10:48pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by cswann1 View Post
OMG, I bet this is exactly how Skynet started!!

Speaking of Skynet, I hope Christian Bale got paid a lot for that last Terminator abortion, because he may have just sunk his career.
The movie wasn't that bad.
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post #33 of 36
12/7/09 at 4:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by smrtby123 View Post
Wow really? $200 for production costs is amazing compared to what it was estimated to be at launch. If that is the case the wii must be around $75 .

What kind of simulations are they running with these?
the department of defense bought the most powerful supercomputer today from crays for simulating nuclear decay and weapons improvement. i wouldnt be surprised if air force used them to compute flight data from research.

&& to the previous comment, 1 tesla card based on the gtx280 at $1500 has about 1 teraflop of computing power. and 1 rackmount case can support upto 4x teslas. one rackmount with 4teraflop power costs like $8000, 150gigaflop for a ps3 at $300. i dunno, i think teslas are much more energy efficient, space saving, and much more powerful.
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post #34 of 36
12/7/09 at 5:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by untrueparadox View Post
the department of defense bought the most powerful supercomputer today from crays for simulating nuclear decay and weapons improvement. i wouldnt be surprised if air force used them to compute flight data from research.

&& to the previous comment, 1 tesla card based on the gtx280 at $1500 has about 1 teraflop of computing power. and 1 rackmount case can support upto 4x teslas. one rackmount with 4teraflop power costs like $8000, 150gigaflop for a ps3 at $300. i dunno, i think teslas are much more energy efficient, space saving, and much more powerful.
With regards to why they didn't use Tesla cards:

Quote:
The Air Force also has no plans to drop this method, as moving to an alternative technology hardware would also cause duplication of costs associated with redeveloping the software, military systems, and applications already based on the existing Sony PS3 cluster.
From their Justification document linked from https://www.fbo.gov/index?&s=opportu...e&tabmode=list (emphasis mine)
Quote:
The new PS3s will be placed in a cluster environment with an existing cluster of 336 PS3s by connecting each of the units’ one gigabit Ethernet port to a common 24 port gigabit hub. Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software. Commercial as well as in-house developed software code specific to these cell processor architectures will be studied. The objective of the architectural studies is to determine the best fit for implementation of various applications. An example would be determining additional software and hardware requirements for Advanced Computing Architectures (ACA) and High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) applications.
Sorry for the large quote, but I think it really clarifies what exactly they're trying to do and with what.
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post #35 of 36
12/7/09 at 6:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by smrtby123 View Post
This reminds me of that old polish joke where the polish army buys 2000 septic tanks.
haven't heard that one, please enlighten me

Quote:
Originally Posted by fenixdown110 View Post
They made a gripload of money of the systems though. 2200 at 300 a pop is no pocket change.
Even if they are paying $300 per unit (which is doubtful at those quantities) 2200*$300=$660,000. That is pocket change for the USAF whose annual budget is around $80 billion and for Sony whose revenue last year was around $77 billion.
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post #36 of 36
1/26/10 at 11:12pm
LOL lets see....the ATI 5870 would get you 2.7 Teraflops for the same price as a PS3. Throw them in some crazy Crossfire arrays with i7 processors (assume 4 cards with an upper end i7 and 12 gigs of DDR3, cost around $3k). That'll make for about 30 desktop computers, total cost about 90,000 USD. so for about 1/7 the price, you've got a much more effective, compact and proven supercomputer array

I think either the Air Force is stupid or Sony did something under the table...
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