Almost a year ago on November 25th 2009 I wrote a up a news story detailing the United States Airforce plan to string together a load of PlayStation 3s to create a supercomputer. At the time they had a couple of hundred but now the supercomputer cluster is live and houses 1,760 PlayStation 3s along with 168 general purpose processors.
Named ‘The Condor Cluster’ the supercomputer is the biggest, fastest interactive computer the Defence Department has and is the 33rd largest supercomputer in the world. Not bad for a little console that was designed to play MotorStorm.
The total cost for the cluster came in around $2 million, ten to twenty times cheaper than if they had built the system using traditional computing methods.
Airman Magazine Online claims the system will allow scientists to monitor an area of around 25 kilometres (16 miles) in real time. The system will be used to locate and target bratty twelve year old kids who insult your parentage in multiplayer Call Of Duty games.*
The Defence department is ‘winding down’ it’s reliance on old cell microprocessors and Mark Barnell, the high-performance computing director at the Air Force Research Lab’s operation in Rome, New York, said:
“We’re looking forward to working with the next generation of architecture.”
That’s Defence Department speak for “Bring on the PS4! W00t!”
*This may be completely untrue.
Source: Clevland.Com
Grey_Ghost13
With that many PS3’s do you think they could run them all together on GT5 and get the near perfection Kaz is aiming for?
And weren’t hey reliant on linux running their PS3’s?
Pedromr
They probably run 3.20 or older firmware… What means they can’t play gt5… Poor guys… :P
gideon1451
I think they’d have got permission from Sony to do what they like softwarewise.
Blayney
Reading the article they have to run the older firmware – which means replacing the ps3s is difficult if they have an issue. Imagine how many YLOD’s they must’ve had!?
Jas-n
Probably not a lot of YLOD’s to be honest, YLOD’s most likely caused from excessive heating and cooling, these babies would be on constantly.
teflon
If only they could run GT5, and there was some custom designed code… They could create a giant dome of screens, stick someone in the middle with a seat and wheel, and play GT5 in a properly mental Virtual Reality kind of way…
While they’re at it, they might as well rig it up to one of those hydraulic force feedback sets you get in F1 and air force testing rooms, and have all the TVs be 3D…
Awesome incarnate.
TheShepanator
And also a whole bunch of hyper quiet fans to blast air in your face as your racing
Serebii.Net
“Almost a year ago on November 25th 2009”
You just divided by zero, didn’t you?
Charmed_Fanatic
Serebii.Net is on here? wow
gazzagb
He’s been on here for ages…
exellentgamer
i love this kind of news they are awesome
amazing story i want to see this in real life!!!!
hazelam
insert obligatory skynet reference here. :)
gazzagb
1,760 PlayStation 3 doing F@H is probably Jas-n’s wet dream. :P
Jas-n
I must order new underwear.
But seriously, there’s enough of us on here to have more than that folding…
iiekka
remember hearing about that, 1,760 is a lot of proccessing power. wonder if the it guy invites his mates over at the weekend and has massive gaming sessions
cam the man
Would need a fair few tv screens.
Samiro05
I wonder if they could get all the PS3 consoles to sync with one controller. PS Button Press and… BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP [although come to think of it they’d probs just beep at the same time and resonate the eardrums off the weilder of the controller]
uber-BARBIE
Apparently it still cant handle cross game chat ;)
rht992
oh cheeky
jikomanzoku
nice :)
ElGuason
that’s freaking awesome i remember reading an article about the AF bitching to sony about the software update, but this is freaking cool still china ahead of the game though…
rht992
thats pretty awesome although i’m going to just wait and see what they actually do it for. i’d feel a bit guilty if it were used for something destructive or evil like playing activison games :o