PS3 Powered Supercomputer Loaned Out to Aid Research - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 26 April 2011 / 4,145 Views
The PS3 clustered supercomputer, (called Condor) used by the Air Force Research Laboratory to find patterns in spy plane images and mountains of text, is being loaned out to large institutions performing research.
Condor Project Engineer Mark Barnell says Condor is among the top 40 fastest computers in the world. It’s composed of 1,716 Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game consoles, 168 general purpose GPUs and 78 computer servers powered by 2.67 GHz Intel Xenon X5650 multi-core processors.
One of the ways the Condor is being used is to create artificial neural networks. Tarek Taha, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Dayton in Ohio using two main algorithms, Taha explained.
The first deals with visual problems such as facial recognition and maze navigation. The second algorithm is set to solve similar problems, but the model is more biological. Computers are traditionally very bad at this job, while our brains do these things very easily. Modeling the system after our brains might produce a faster computer. “The PS3’s Cell processor handles a lot of parallelism,” Taha said, “like neurons in a brain.”
“We may not get a walking, talking robot that acts just like us, but at the very least we should be able to get smarter computers,” Taha said.
Now if only I could play games online. Bazinga!
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at the same time, they probably did have all that stuff when buying it. you see, sony wouldn't sell a PS3 without blu ray to the govt because they would lose money on just selling the cell processors. im not sure.
either way, they could take the disk drive out. i think the ps3 starts without it.
Ahaha, I love all those people thinking that those are just ordinary Playstations. These Playstations probably don't even have a disc player, WIFI connector etc.
cool
I hope it was more secure than what everyone else had in a ps3.
god i hate people quoting sony pr's hot garbage
Nobody uses otherOS. Nobody. hmmm
this is why OtherOS is important.
Remember that "play beyond" commercial, I guess the Cell Proceessor really is smarter then you are.
Better watch out, some hacker will steal the research.
has nothing to do with that.
the govt wanted a super computer.
PS3 offered other OS, which meant it could do what they wanted.
the hardware in a ps3 at launch cost $600 retail, but was worth about $1000 in parts alone.
govt then decided, lets buy like 500 of them and link them together so we save a bunch of $$.
but on a side note, since other OS is removed, they can't replace any PS3 that breaks down.... lol
@usrevenge: they would of bought bulk to. But i want to know what the solider said to his commanding officer that he needs thousands of PS3's.
PS3 when released was the cheapest way to buy that kind of hardware, the military did good on the bargain hunting
