New PS3 "Condor" Supercomputer Now Fully Online

Dark Crystal reference nice!!!! Love it. 1716 ps3's! that is crazy. I didn't want to pay for the one I have! I wonder if they are using fats or slims and how they cool the room. Mine gets warm with just one running.

Drake,

Fats, no question. The PS3 Slim doesn't run Linux.

Ha, good call about the Linux. Brain fart on my part. And yes those fatties are like mopeds, fun to ride until your friends find out!

My Gen 1 60gb is still running strong. And now with a 500 WD black drive. 

>> The PS3 Slim doesn't run Linux.

Depends on if they're running "standard" systems or not.  It's not like Sony's going to sue the Air Force for doing what they want with their own hardware (they reserve that for civilians who don't have an entire army of JAGs that also happen to know how to kill).

The PS3 Slim is perfectly capable of running Linux - it's just not enabled in their firmware. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gItOpt81UnI

[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gItOpt81UnI]

Ah gotta love those fatties!

thats crazy fun. very interesting way to make a supercomputer.

sorry to be that guy, but that seems like a mighty small budget they got approved.

Small but did the job :D, would be fun to play some games on that :P, it is built to game or at least built after gaming consoles... :)

Inspector:

Small but did the job :D, would be fun to play some games on that :P, it is built to game or at least built after gaming consoles... :)

I don't think any game created today could harness the power of Condor, maybe in the near future of 2025.

Also, 1000th post y'all!

$2.5 isn't enough to buy all those ps3's, it was my subtle hint at a typo.

Thinking outside the box just may pay off for them. I think that if it works, then use it.

"Once the Department of Defense approved $2.5 in funding for Condor" Dang either something is really wrong with my head or the department of defense got a new budget coordinater and Sony just gave up the battle against Xbox and decided since they had so many PS3's left unsold they might as well give them away. Well that or there is a miswritten part to this statement and that was supposed to have been $2500 right, lol :)

I think it is supposed to be 2.5 Million dollars. This is pretty sweet and distributed computing in the way of the world right now just look at the Folding@home project.

For most organizations, this would be A Horrible Horrible Choice. PS3's can't be updated with new firmware to fix bugs, because if they do they'll lose the ability to boot Linux. Same thing will probably happen if one of them fries or needs repair (It'll be sent back with the latest firmware).

Of course, they'll probably bend over backwards for the Air Force. Sony's riding high on the free publicity that their console powers a supercomputer, without mentioning that they took away the capability for anybody else to do this.

Some new games require the new firmware. So, Sony has now put me in the spot of losing Linux on the system or lose the ability to even play games (like Dragon Age II) OFFLINE. They can get bent, in my humble opinion.

We've hacked over the nature of Sony's Linux stupidity on more than one occasion; it's nothing that needs to be addressed here. As far as I know, Sony doesn't provide any type of specialized support in terms of firmware updates or guaranteed replacement parts—but then, that doesn't mean such agreements don't exist. Intel, after all, continued to build specialized hardened x86 processors for the space shuttle decades after the original chips had been antiquated.

It's also possible that the work the lab wants to do simply doesn't require much in the way of patched firmware.

>> It's also possible that the work the lab wants to do simply doesn't require much in the way of patched firmware.

Which is fine until you find out that it has a bug that causes the clock to randomly reset after the next leap-day (in 2012).

If you don't have complete control and/or support for hardware you're deploying, you're doing it wrong.

>> We've hacked over the nature of Sony's Linux stupidity on more than one occasion; it's nothing that needs to be addressed here.

My intent is simply to inform any company that might read this and say "Hey, that's a great idea!  We can do that!".that there are major Sony-added-post-sale drawbacks that now make this an idiotic approach to building your own supercomputer.  And, that there's no guarantee Sony won't sue you if you download/use the tools that are needed to work around those drawbacks.

It's my opinion that Sony removed Linux in the Slim specifically to stop people from doing this, since they were selling no games for consoles purposed in this manner.  They'd rather the consoles be sold to the users that are going to drive up game-attach rates, rather than have to warranty consoles that make them little to no money.  When people started hacking the Slim to run Linux, they removed Linux from everyone in an attempt to drive the community of developers to another platform.  So, I'll probably never stop addressing Sony's anti-consumer actions when I feel it's relevant to the story.

That's nuts lol using ps3's I guess if it works more power to them lol thats prety sick tho

leave it to the AF to be resourceful. It would cost them exponentially more to build a cluster with IBM lets say. however, the use of IBM would grant them access to a warranty. I wonder if sonys factory warranty covers blowing up a node(ps3) due to extreme overuse. Also it is likely cheaper b/c they do not have to purchase racks or apparently any cable management system, ie paneled floor. It looks like the went to walmart and said "Give me all the cheapest racks you got, I need them yesterday." The cooling is probably not the same as a server room either given that a ps3 to my understanding is built to withstand a beating in closed entertainment heatboxes. Whereas alot of the cooling of servers comes from monster airconditioners located to the front of the server so that hot air filters out the back and up to the ceiling through the vents where the air is cooled and sent back through the cycle. You could probably leave the windows open in the room with the ps3's and throw a couple of $10 fans in the windows to circulate air and call it a day, obviously not but you know what I mean.

Next up 3000 ps3s.

I wish i could head over to rome and see it, but i'm pretty sure griffiss air force base doesnt let any one in.

Who's job is it to manage all those  PS3's?

Oh number 582 just went out...
..I got it!!!!!

"It's my opinion that Sony removed Linux in the Slim specifically to stop people from doing this, since they were selling no games for consoles purposed in this manner. They'd rather the consoles be sold to the users that are going to drive up game-attach rates, rather than have to warranty consoles that make them little to no money. When people started hacking the Slim to run Linux, they removed Linux from everyone in an attempt to drive the community of developers to another platform"

That wouldn't explain why Sony spent significant effort talking *up* the supercomputing angle. They drove the story in that direction at a time when the gap between console price and loss-per-unit was at its height. If Sony had gotten into the business of providing Cell server blades, it would help explain their flip-flop.

Check the timeline of these events. The PS3 Slim came out first. It was followed by news of a partial PS3 hack. *That*'s when Sony closed ranks and refused to allow fat PS3s to run OtherOS--and it's that decision that sent Fail0verflow looking for a way around it.

Thanks for the update Joel.

While I would have to agree Sony is not a customer service oriented company at all they used to build their products to fail shortly after the warranties were expired. It would be nice to seem them put the cell technology to use in blade servers or at least license out the technology so that others can use it. In many ways they are similar to Apple in how they view customers as criminals first.

This was actually done for the Air force to play SOCOM 4