Paul may have 3 PS3s, but the US Air Force has 2536 PS3s

[Mad Madam Mimm]

Am I the only person who picked up on

The entire set-up runs on an in-house developed Linux-based OS.

Is Paul secretly running the US air force?

[FFN]

...I don't get it. I see this story every now and then - the US Air Force thinks they're the most awesome thing ever. Even with the unbeardedness of Paul it still doesn't make sense to me.

,,,,

Paul is more awesome. I guess no-one told the US Air Force.

Does Paul have F-22 Raptors? *crosses arms*

[Arius]

Am I the only person who picked up on

The entire set-up runs on an in-house developed Linux-based OS.

Is Paul secretly running the US air force?

Well... They are secretly planning a violent takeover of the Escapist...

[Emperor Gum]

...I don't get it. I see this story every now and then - the US Air Force thinks they're the most awesome thing ever. Even with the unbeardedness of Paul it still doesn't make sense to me.

I've worked with Paul before, he's amazing at pretty much everything! Paul was always awesome, especially with his 3 PS3s - that's why the US Air Force is buying so many PS3s. Given that Paul is well over 10 times as awesome I'd seriously question the awesome factor of a PS3 cluster versus just basking in the radiated awesome of Paul.

In fact, working on a scale from 1 to awesome, a PS3 is OK, but Paul (with or without his beard) is super-great. In terms of awesomeness Paul is quite a margin ahead already. But when you consider that:

1) Paul has the ability to turn into Ulric, plus a bunch of other awesome characters.
2) Paul doesn't require mains-power (as far as we know), so you're not wasting power on all those PS3s...
3) The advantage Paul has over the PS3s will increase exponentially the more you think about it.
4) Paul is DESTINED to be awesome, meaning that an attempt to compete with him is completely futile.

I mean they could be leveraging the PS3 GPUs to create a virtual Paul, but they'd run into more severe not-being-awesome problems there too! Besides which as I understand it virtual Paul would be pretty restricted in terms of being awesome (versus newer technologies like a Paul clone).

Still, maybe I'm missing some vital piece of information which procludes me from understanding their rationale. I've spoken to a number of people at conferences and such and they all say the same thing: Paul is more awesome. I guess no-one told the US Air Force.

This is my favourite post for a while. Thank you.

[octopimpostor]

...I don't get it. I see this story every now and then - the US Air Force thinks they're the most awesome thing ever. Even with the unbeardedness of Paul it still doesn't make sense to me.

,,,,

Paul is more awesome. I guess no-one told the US Air Force.

Does Paul have F-22 Raptors? *crosses arms*

Well he actually has 3

[goat]

You have to figure that there are a lot of people in the military, far more people than PS3s, giving them a ratio of far less than 1 PS3 per person.

Whereas Paul has 3 PS3s, giving him a ratio of 3 PS3s per person.

I think it's obvious who is the winner here.

[Machalllewis]

Also Paul has that cake.

[aurora.melody2]

I'm surprised that the Air Force would do this. I mean, yeah, the PS3 is powerful, but it's a consumer product. They're the US Military. Why wouldn't they just buy a couple supercomputers which are significantly more powerful. They have access to that sort of stuff.
They must have done this just because they can, not because it's the best way.

[epocalypse]

ya know, i have heard that the PS3 is actually the best deal for its cost as far as computing power goes, I remember hearing about a different, private ps3 cluster comp used to simulate black holes... anybody know where there's more data on that?

[epocalypse]

Am I the only person who picked up on

The entire set-up runs on an in-house developed Linux-based OS.

Is Paul secretly running the US air force?

oh, it's a secret now? why doesn't anybody tell me these things!?!?

[aurora.melody2]

Either way, it won't be long until those PS3s achieve sentience and try to destroy us.

[epocalypse]

Either way, it won't be long until those PS3s achieve sentience and try to destroy us.

look, I actually think I've realized part of the problem here: virtually every time in fiction or hypotheticals that man witnesses a machine gain sentience (intelligence, self awareness, survival instinct and all other things that that entails,) our first reflex is to antagonize them by attempting to destroy them. What if we try to compromise, and build towards a better tomorrow, recognizing the innate worth of an intelligent being? you know, like in wall•e. See how well things went there because when people and robots met the sentient robot, they in general learned from and befriended him instead of shouting "KILL, KILL, KILL!!"?

I guess what I'm trying to say is be kind to your PS3 brethren.

[Rikadyn]

I'm surprised that the Air Force would do this. I mean, yeah, the PS3 is powerful, but it's a consumer product. They're the US Military. Why wouldn't they just buy a couple supercomputers which are significantly more powerful. They have access to that sort of stuff.
They must have done this just because they can, not because it's the best way.

Cost

With respect to cell processors, a single 1U server configured with two 3.2GHz cell processors can cost up to $8K while two Sony PS3s cost approximately $600. Though a single 3.2 GHz cell processor can deliver over 200 GFLOPS, whereas the Sony PS3 configuration delivers approximately 150 GFLOPS, the approximately tenfold cost difference per GFLOP makes the Sony PS3 the only viable technology for HPC applications

[Ergo]

With respect to cell processors, a single 1U server configured with two 3.2GHz cell processors can cost up to $8K while two Sony PS3s cost approximately $600. Though a single 3.2 GHz cell processor can deliver over 200 GFLOPS, whereas the Sony PS3 configuration delivers approximately 150 GFLOPS, the approximately tenfold cost difference per GFLOP makes the Sony PS3 the only viable technology for HPC applications

But the Cell chip in the PS3 can only do 12.8 GFLOPS accurately. Fine for gaming, not for doing "real" computation.

Beyond a certain point (say 40 PS3 nodes), a cluster of QS22s is cheaper, more efficient at supercomputing, (much) faster, and has over 32x more memory at a minimum.

I still say this might've looked like a good idea on paper when they decided to do this, but the numbers don't add up once you really look into it.

I also realised - they're using Linux; the PS3 Hypervisor won't allow access to the GPU, so that's out of the equation. The Hypervisor also acts as arbitrator for the Gigabit ethernet, slowing things down drastically in a grid context.

[Metcarfre]

I don't know much about computers, but I have heard many, many examples of PS3s being used in this way before. So it seems legit to me.

[Ergo]

Just because an idea is broadly implemented doesn't make it any less stupid.

I mean good luck to them - it'll work plenty well enough to be useful. On paper it looks like a nice saving - that'll win them some political brownie points too, for sure. But when it comes down to actually doing science; well, they could've done a lot better for their money. But that's beaurocracy for you.

(Also prior examples I've seen have tended to be concerned with far smaller PS3 clusters (i.e. less than 40), where there actually is a favourable cost/performance ratio).

[Lord Chrusher]

One think that is poor about a PS3 is how little RAM they have - just 256 MB. The IBM blades come with at least 8 GB.

There is a big difference between server hardware and consumer hardware in terms of reliability. Server hardware is meant to run flat out for years with out breaking while consumer level equipment only needs to survive intermittent use. While buying cheap consumer hardware may seem like a savings it can end up being more expensive in the long run.

As other people have noted a large cost of running a supercomputer is the power and cooling for it. The cost to power and cool can exceed the total hardware costs. Again expensive server hardware has the edge.

[Cybren]

Isn't this a recurring /. joke?