U.S.A.F. Buys 1700+ PS3's to make supercomputer

Seriously They did. I have not one clue why but they did.
Here are links:
This first one is from Yahoo! where I orginally found out about it as I was going to check my E-mail.

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/u-s-air-force-building-supercomputer-from-ps3s/1387199

This next one is a serch I did on Google. The first result was a forum post about it on the playstation website itself along with other sites.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=U.S.A.F.+make+supercomputer+with+ps3&aq=f&aqi=&oq=

I am not sure if this belongs here or not. I thought about putting it in IB, but changed my mind cause I did not think of this as fitting in there. Since this is at least from what I can tell to be totally true.

Anyway topic open for talk. Say what you think. In my opinon even for the reason they give it seems like a waste of taxpayers money. Of course since when has the goverment given a care about that knid of thing recently.

this is as random as random gets. GJ on thread location.

I figured it would fit either here or IB. But IB is more of, how should I say, stupid funny or funny type things. And this just made me go "Wait, WTF are they thinking."

Good Job indeed. Now we won't get four posts with "Wait......What?" images.

...........................
I guess it's an idea of some sort....Why couldn't the techs just ask sony for processors, and then use other high end parts?

perhaps sony wanted to take advantage of the news... I mean the USAF buying 1700 ps3's sound a hell of a lot better than the USAF buying 1700 processors from Sony. Plus to be honest it's a good way to drive the ps3 sales which only looks better for their quarterly.

wonder what they plan on making, some type of flight simulator I assume (i didn't read the articles as I am lazy).

your right it proably will look better on their sales record.

And on what they are making. In the Yahoo article it said they are making a "Supercomputer." Here is a quote from the yahoo site:



On a side note it also said they are naming the thing the "500 TeraFLOPS Heterogeneous Cluster."

truthfully if the goverment wants to do this okay. But why have the U.S.A.F. do it.

I wonder if theyre really just gonna use it for RnR and not this research thing.

nice i bet the officer in charge of this order was like oh shit finaly getting paid correctly xD

Ok.. now I want to know how advanced the PS3 processors is.

Will they be heavily modded or not?

They're building a PS4!

What games do you think they got with it mabye there using MW2 to train them.

I say they are just enjoying themselves with all that PS3's...

Here are the specs for the PS3. I remember hearing before it came out that the processor had something like 25 million cells.

PS3 < 360 confirmed.

Sony fanboys am cry.

This man speaks the truth.

At least Sony can have a little sales bump now.
I bet they picked up copies with Uncharted in it.
A super computer though? really?
that just proves japan has to much time on their hands when they developed the ps3.

My sentiments exactly. Sounds like another excuse of this "go green" shit. It even says in the article that it will be less powerful than a normal supercomputer rig, but will use up considerably less power.

That's fine and all, but how about wasting your own damn money instead of the taxpayer money so you can lose less energy in the long run. "Oh hi guys! We'll use your money so we can spend less ourselves!"

The tax payers pay the electricty bill for the USAF so technically, they are being fisically responsible by making a less power consuming supercomputer.

That may be true. But, which is cheaper to make. A regular supercomputer or a 1700+ PS3's combined to make one. Now I have no clue how much a regular supercomputer would cost to make. But just to buy that many PS3's would cost $509,983 ( I got that figure from using the Cheapest cost to get a PS3 off of bestbuy.com right now and the calculator on my computer). That figure is of course not including, that since they did a mass buy, the discount they proably got.

And on the electricity bill which is cheaper 1 super computer or 1700+ PS3.

However does it still make senes to use half-million of the taxpayers money to buy 1700+ PS3. To try and make a supercomputer, that will try and help them understand how the human brain translates images into information.

As I said before I think it is a waste of money.

to be honest, the ps3 processor is more expensive than the price they are selling the ps3 at, so the USAF is getting better processors for a smaller aount of taxpayer funds than if they were to buy something from another source. Sony was only really able to profit on the ps3 because of the games, the systems cost more to produce than they are sold for. Most of you are just freaking over nothing. Also to be honest PS3 is better than the 360 but its mostly due to having an extra year of development.