Pictured: The U.S. Air Force's PS3 Cluster Set-up

[spectrewind]

[citation][nom]megamanx00[/nom]Your tax dollars at work[/citation]

I had the EXACT same thought.

Prefacing with my lack of knowledge of PS3 hardware, I do understand that he "launch 60" unit has a hyper-visor mode that allows the boot other OS function (for installing Linux, for example). The problem is, this hypervisor does not use the full potential of the PS3.

I could be completely wrong, but I imaging the hypervisor being granted access to, lets say, 10% of the PS3 hardware capability (I have no idea what the real number is).

Continuing this logic, if Sony granted full hardware access, the FED would be able to buy about 1/10 of the hardware and accomplish the same task.

Accurate, no possibly. Although this is what I see.

 

[lordfakie]

They are probably playing Ace Combat and say, hey yeah its some radar and aircraft monitoring stuff.

 

[lordfakie]

So, this is how they control the UAV's

 

[FoShizzleDizzle]

So this explains the supposed increase in PS3 sales

 

[pocketdrummer]

[citation][nom]schizofrog[/nom]But can it play Crysis??? (Sorry... I just had to... )[/citation]

I don't know why you're getting thumbed down, that's exactly what I was thinking, lol!

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]spectrewind[/nom]I imaging the hypervisor being granted access to, lets say, 10% of the PS3 hardware capability (I have no idea what the real number is).[/citation]
Actually, as I recall, the main restriction placed by the PS3's Hypervisor is that you can't access the RSX, which is the GPU. Math-wise, it only accounts for, IIRC, some 26.4 Gflops, and as it's a GPU, would be even harder to use for computing than a hybrid design like the CBE.

Even under Linux, 6 of the 7 SPEs are available for programming; the same as is available for any PS3 game. (the 7th is reserved by Sony for background functions in either case) This would bring the effective power available to a flat 160.0 Gigaflops. (from 185.6)

I don't know if the application in use there might have modified things with a different implementation, such as one that might've reclaimed all SPEs to run for what was desired.

 

[cj_online]

Wouldn't they have to configure each one individually at first ?

 

[nottheking]

[citation][nom]Hanin33[/nom]this is pure marketing for a few reasons:[/citation]
Yeah, I'd be largely inclined to agree. As I mentioned above, there's better means of getting the Cell available. Actually, IBM's blade servers use an IMPROVED version of the Cell, (the "PowerXCell") that was made 65nm by default, and specially geared toward double-preicision processing, which is what supercomputing applications typically use. All the "flops" figures I gave above are for single-precision, which is what GAMES use. If a chip isn't designed to handle double-precision chiefly, (which is the case for the PS3's Cell) it takes more than twice as much to computer a single double-precision operation as it does a single-precision one; hence, a PS3's CPU is only capable of about 51.2 gigaflops max double-precision; about equal to a mid-range quad-core x86 CPU of today.

Meanwhile, the PowerXCell not only has 8 full SPEs available (instead of 6/7 for the PS3) but also is designed to handle double-precision specifically, granting it around 108.8 gigaflops of power @3.2GHz. (or more at higher speeds) This makes far more sense for supercomputers, since it doesn't generate any extra heat, draw any more power, etc. This is the chip used in the RoadRunner supercomputer.

 

[bayouboy]

[citation][nom]techguy911[/nom]You fail at math an hd5870 needs a computer to run thus those are gpu's a ps3 is a full computer a video card cannot run apps by itself.[/citation]

Fine.
AM3 MB, $100
AMD Phenom II X4 925, $150
1 Gig DDR3 Memory, $30
2x HD5870, $800
2x 550 Watt Power Supplies, $100
Case, $30

Total: $1,210 for 5.44 TFLOPS of AMD goodness. Which works out to $0.2225 per GFLOPS. Still better than your PS3. Get over it, the PS3's "prowess" is marketing hype.

 

[donaldduck]

[citation][nom]Jane McEntegart[/nom]Oh, so THAT'S what 336 PS3s looks like.[/citation]
Cool! 😀

Anyway, while I do understand that the price/performance ratio is (mostly) unbeatable in terms of hardware purchase I am not really sure about the practical "logistic" part of this.
A game console is not made to be used 24/7 at 100%, so I am pretty sure this "cluster" will have a quite high maintenance cost.
This also uses the "old" fat PS3, that if I am not mistaken, will not be produced anymore; so if there is a high failure rate it will be more and more difficult to get replacement.
A solution like nvidia Tesla would have been more practical. Probably more expensive for the same performance but with a better corporate support, not to mention that nvidia will also support the development aspect of it, while the PS3 solution completely relies on in-house developing. I really like the "cool" and technical aspects of this, of course, just it doesn't seem too reliable for a production environment nor for military uses.

 

[reichscythe]

[citation][nom]techguy911[/nom]
I have a quad core running folding@home it is nowhere near as fast as ps3.[/citation]


Then it's time to upgrade your video card, Sonny Jim, because the GPU clients have been smokin' the PS3 in folding for ages now!

Did you even bother to read the links you put up?? Right in the middle of the page it explains that the PS3 is a middle-road performance/flexibility solution and rests between a CPU and a GPU: it out-performs a CPU, but is far outclassed by the speed and power of GPUs (there's even a handy chart, which you appear to have missed, showing how much GPU performance stops the Cell in the type of calculation done by the Folding software)...

According to the very link you posted, the strength of the PS3 for Folding lies primarily in its FLEXIBILITY (vs GPUs), NOT its RAW POWER (and certainly not in terms of price/performance, since a 3870 can smoke a PS3 and costs much less than $300)

I'd hate to straight out call you a "tool"... but you're sortof crusin' for it...

 

[caparc]

May be they need 512k frames per second for ultra smooth game play.

 

[jkflipflop98]

[citation][nom]Honis[/nom]No it wouldn't. PS3 = 1.7 Teraflops GPU. 2 Teraflops Floating Point.Intel Core i7 965 XE = 40 GigaflopsFor 100 quad cores to match the PS3 they'd need to be packing some good GPUs raising the cost of the system and the development
. The PS3s they are using support linux and thus the C programming language if they have 1 PS3 C compiler. This means with very little tweeking they can have the system up and running. If they went to GPU processing, they would need to convert all the calculations (the meat of the program) to use whatever proprietary language NVidia or ATI/AMD dictated. So, not only would the hardware of the quad core cluster be more expensive, the development would too.Sony was shooting itself in the foot. They are taking a loss on the PS3 hardware while trying to sell Cell based servers at a profit. I think they figured it out and that's why we don't see Linux in the Slim (one of the reasons at least).[/citation]

There's no way in hell 2 nvidia 7800's in sli are putting out 1.7 TFLOPS. That's the GPU in a PS3. Core i7 965 puts out 71 GFLOPS.

But, this is the most cost-effective route. I'm sure Sony doesn't like it, though. Being as they're still taking a $100+ loss on every PS3 console.

 

[matt87_50]

[citation][nom]schizofrog[/nom]But can it play Crysis??? (Sorry... I just had to... )[/citation]


pfft, that mofo could raytrace crysis!!!1!