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Tim in Phoenix
Joined: 21 Oct 2006
Posts: 4409
Location: Phoenix
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| Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 4:59 pm Post subject: Don't try this at home! |
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Air Force researchers have created the defense department's largest interactive supercomputer by linking 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3s, the Air Force Times reports.
Moreover, says the director of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, the linkup forms the 35th fastest computer in the world.
Research director Mark Barnell says the lab spent about $2 million, or about one tenth the cost of using traditional computer equipment, to build the "Condor Cluster."
"We're striving hard to make affordable and constrained systems, where they can really use them and make a difference," he told reporters earlier this month.
The new Condor Cluster will be used to process high-resolution satellite images and boost surveillance capabilities, the Times reports.
The supercomputer can achieve about 1.5 GigaFLOPS per watt of computing power. FLOPS, or floating point operations per second, is the unit by which supercomputing power is measured.
A typical supercomputer can reach only about one-15th of that, the Times says.
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dturco
Joined: 06 Feb 2009
Posts: 3778
Location: Eastern Shore Maryland
TV/Projector: Runco DLP VX-3000i Marquee 9500 parts doner
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| Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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Oh no, isn't that how Skynet achieves awareness in T-3 
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Firefly rules. Can't stop the signal.
http://www.hulu.com/firefly
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Tim in Phoenix
Joined: 21 Oct 2006
Posts: 4409
Location: Phoenix
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| Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| dturco wrote: | | Oh no, isn't that how Skynet achieves awareness in T-3 |
Yeah, and way under budget too! 
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mr_ro_co
Joined: 08 May 2006
Posts: 1643
Location: Santa Fe NM
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| Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 6:20 pm Post subject: |
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10 years ago I saw 40,000 CPU Beowulf clusters installed by investment banks as a cost effective alternative to traditional supercomputers to run gambling algorithms solely for the purpose of placing a few credit derivative trades per day. Arbitrage!
I wonder why the Air Force would use PS3s when surely commodity hardware using RISC cpus running a custom kernel would be cheaper and better. My theory that news releases like this are more for propaganda than anything else.
Steve
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Not only is there no god, try finding a plumber on Sunday!
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kal
Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 18114
Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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| Posted: Mon Dec 27, 2010 10:47 pm Post subject: |
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| mr_ro_co wrote: | | I wonder why the Air Force would use PS3s when surely commodity hardware using RISC cpus running a custom kernel would be cheaper and better. My theory that news releases like this are more for propaganda than anything else. |
No, you have that completely backwards. The PS3 is as "commodity" as you can get. There's nothing out there with the same computing power per dollar. One reason is that the PS3 is highly subsidized by the fact that most people buying the cheap console end up buying $100's of dollars worth of games/movies/downloads every year. Same reason you can get a cell phone for "free" if you sign up for a plan.
Kal
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nemmi69
Joined: 24 Aug 2007
Posts: 60
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| Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 11:09 pm Post subject: |
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| dturco wrote: | | Oh no, isn't that how Skynet achieves awareness in T-3 |
By the way there interconnecting network that supports all the remote systems is called Skynet.....guess they never watched Terminator
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What doesn't kill you is only biding it's time
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