The US Air Force is currently using 20,000 PS3's. You'll never guess what for...

[guyver01]

http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/sony-otheros-aftereffects-13-05-2010/

Back in the day when the PS3 was released the US Air Force purchased 20,000 PS3’s to create a cost effective super computer.

The US Air Force has installed Linux on the 20,000 PS3’s and although they may not be affected by the firmware updates, if any replacement PS3’s are required then problems might arise.

As well as the US Air Force and number of Universities have also take advantage of the cell processors power to dollar ratio and the University of Massachusetts is currently working with a cluster of 16 of the consoles. Though hopefully Sony would make an exception to the rule for certain parties. But is this fair?

More information about the US Air Force and their use of the PS3’s can be found here

 

[TridenT]

lol... US Air Force, you is so silly!

 

[guyver01]

One must wonder what happened to those PS3 controllers and other unneeded accessories

 

[thescreensavers]

Sony should tell them, ok give us a contract or someshit and we will give you a custom firmware.

 

[Leros]

The PS3s are (or at least were at the time) the best bang for your buck for a project like this. Hats off to the airforce for being capable of doing unique solutions like this instead of relying on standard vendors.

 

[Adrenaline]

They bought all of those PS3s for that purpose. I would hate to see the USAF sue Sony over the firmware issues if a bunch of them fail.

At $500 a PS3 that is $10,000,000 worth of them. They may have gotten a discount, but they still gave Sony millions of dollars for a specified use. They may have a contract with them with regards to their use.

 

[darkswordsman17]

At least they're not wasting them by using them to "train" soldiers using MW2.

Where are they getting 20,000 from? The article they linked to says they bought only 336 in 2009 to try out, then bought 1700 more earlier this year.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Too bad they couldn't wait for Fermi. A Fermi based Tegra processing farm would absolutely destroy those in cost effectiveness.

 

[Nik]

This is old news.

Additionally not-surprisingly, the PS3 does things other than play games better than it does play games.

 

[Leros]

At least they're not wasting them by using them to "train" soldiers using MW2.

Where are they getting 20,000 from? The article they linked to says they bought only 336 in 2009 to try out, then bought 1700 more earlier this year.

Most of what I'm seeing is they had the initial 336, then bought 2200 more.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Too bad they couldn't wait for Fermi. A Fermi based Tegra processing farm would absolutely destroy those in cost effectiveness.

If I'm not mistaken, they considered using GPUs, but they ruled them out because they weren't great at processing something in particular. Not sure what it was. I might be wrong, but I think GPU computing still has a ways to go from the software side. They'd probably spend enough money in software development to make up the difference in cost/performance, and this seemed to be a specifically bang-for-buck oriented issue. That, and Fermi wasn't available, so it makes it a moot point.

The team also looked into advanced GPGPUs but found that they worked best to "accelerate a subset of our algorithms, particularly the frontend processing and backend visualization, but lag the PS3 in the bulk of the calculations where processes need to intercommunicate and share memory beyond what is supported efficiently by the GPGPUs."

From the ArsTechnica article that they're using as their source. It seems that they'd need to pair those GPUs with plenty of CPUs (they even tried out Xeons, which actually worked well but were far more expensive for the performance, although I'd be curious how some Fermis in those systems would fair performance wise).

Most of what I'm seeing is they had the initial 336, then bought 2200 more.

Yeah, the only difference is I'm seeing they were going to buy 2200 later but then lowered it to 1700.

 

[CPA]

One must wonder what happened to those PS3 controllers and other unneeded accessories

Um, it's not like they went to Walmart and purchased their PS3s. The ones sent to them probably never had controllers and accessories as part of the delivered package.

 

[shortylickens]

This is so old I am ashamed for the OP.

 

[guyver01]

This is so old I am ashamed for the OP.

if i haven't seen it... it's news to me!

 

[Vette73]

This is so old I am ashamed for the OP.

The purchase is old news. But Sony now not allowing other OS to be installed is new. So the Air Force could have this project mess up if some of the systems break and sony sends them a new one that will not allow their software on it.

But there is also a lawsuut going on so that may play into this story getting bumped.

 

[coloumb]

Awesome. Could you imagine the look on a supervisor's face when someone suggested they use PS3's instead of good ole fashion servers?

 

[mmntech]

Sony could solve the problem by adding the "Other OS" option back in a new firmware update. That would effectively wipe out the law suits and bad press. I doubt they're that smart. The whole thing was an overreaction to a problem that never really existed.

 

[biggestmuff]

Old

Repost

You didn't need a single one of those apostrophes.

Study this: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/

and this: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp

then complete this assignment: http://worksheetplace.com/mf/Apostrophe-Worksheet-1.pdf

 

[jman19]

Isn't this incredibly old news?

 

[SphinxnihpS]

old

you didn't need a single one of those apostrophes.

lol

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Old

You didn't need a single one of those apostrophes.

LOL (PS3's what?)

 

[KeithTalent]

This: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/05/how-removing-ps3-linux-hurts-the-air-force.ars

and this: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2062666&page=4

If anyone wants to read some fun and interesting stuff on this may all get borked.

KT

 

[Leros]

Sony could solve the problem by adding the "Other OS" option back in a new firmware update. That would effectively wipe out the law suits and bad press. I doubt they're that smart. The whole thing was an overreaction to a problem that never really existed.

Its going to be even better when people find a way to copy games without the OtherOS function.

 

[waggy]

Sony should tell them, ok give us a contract or someshit and we will give you a custom firmware.

why? the USAF already purchased it with that option. so they take it away and you are ok with Sony sayign yeah we took it away but for a extra fee you can have it back?

im waiting for the lawsuits to start against Sony.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I downloaded the 3.3 firmware update and the message came up that it would keep me from installing other OSs. I promptly ditched it.


The AF should just get used ones from ebay for spares.