US military buys 300 Sony PS3s to get its game on
The AirForce Research Laboratory is purchasing 300 Sony PS3s to conduct “unspecified research” on Cell processors; the heart of every PS3. Why exactly it needs 300 of them to do so is not exactly clear; my guess is on some kind of artificial intelligence research.
According to the official notice from the AirForce,
“The processors in the Sony PlayStation 3 are the only brand on the market that utilizes the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost.”
It seems the Cell is more powerful than previously thought. It’s time to get scared when the military is interested in a console because of the processor it uses. It may not be that bad at all. Maybe they just want to use the consoles to power some kind of virtual training environment ala virtual reality/holodeck type technologies.
Then again, Hushedcasket thinks the interest might be one of “building a hive mind based on cell processors.” That’s a frightening thought. Possibilities of becoming slaves to a SkyNet-like system or Borg drones have entered my mind from that statement.
The Los Alamos National Labratory has built a system called “Roadrunner” for the department of energy; it is constructed around PS3 and its Cell processor. Phase 1 of that program is underway, but is near completion. What would the department of energy need with a Cell-based machine?
Looks like machines taking over the world may not be such a far-fetched idea after all. Or maybe it still is and I’ve just watched too many Sci-Fi flicks.
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8 Responses to “US military buys 300 Sony PS3s to get its game on”
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March 5th, 2008
Oh Noez, dis teh ends of teh werlds, for deh cyberdine wilst destroy all us.
March 5th, 2008
All these orginazations are intrested in the ps3 for the same reasons the most critical of witch is cost sony subsidises each ps3 in hopes of earning more in game sails. The second critical reason is it’s openness, sony alows anyone to install linux or other simalar oporating systems on its machene with out this it would be usless. therd is the prosesing power although sony disables its phisics calculating powerhorse of a graphix card and reduces the power of its cell prosesor by 1/7 it is still one hell of a number crucher. In contrast IBM also had a system powerd by the cell prosesor its calld a blade server and runs around $9,000 each.
Why the airforce wants them? To develope software that will calculate the flow of air molicules around a wing or radar reflections or the forces inside new jet desines NOT to creat some virtual reality or traning program. 300 units wont do much though. If it turns out to be effincent and cost efective after the software is finished theay will buy thousends or tens of thousends of units all clusterd together as one super computer.
March 5th, 2008
lolz. what you talking about machines taking over the world. its making the news because its the same processor the ps3 uses and its popular and all that. “the cell” oooohhh. not just A procesor but THE processor… what if they bought 300 of something else? would the machines be taking over the world also? what if it was called “the something else prosessor”? lolz. cool tho. i guess the cell is just all that aint it? wish it made the most awesome games tho!
March 5th, 2008
Come on – why are you people so infantile? You ever heard of clustering? The PS3 with a decent kernel (not necessarily Linux) can be used as a brilliant cluster machine OUT-OF-THE-BOX. The equivalent server machine from IBM or Intel costs over 4K each, and is still has less GFLOP performance than a single PS3.
So, its use would be purely number crunching data. Any sort of data – because it can do it _cheaper_ and _faster_ than anything else around at the moment.
Quit with the fear mongering.. you are scared how much folding@Home could help with protien folding.. so why be scared that similar clusters will help with calculating other large problem sets. Energy for instance – how about some fusion simulations, or solar efficiency simulations, or prediction systems for energy use? See.. its not that hard to THINK.
March 5th, 2008
PS robots !LOL!
March 6th, 2008
Cells archecture has many features which are common with radiation hardened systems – It would be very easy to modify it for very high reliability systems due to the multiple SPU’s and their ability to operate as individual units thus allowing for decision concensus logic.
The chip from the terminator movies is simply a future version of the Cell it’s outstanding ability to scale up to parallel processing across hundreds of cores with no coherency bottlenecks is the only way to acheive the performance necessary for AI.
March 8th, 2008
why be scared that similar clusters will help with calculating other large problem sets. Energy for instance
March 10th, 2008
Or, its the chairforce.. and the pilots are GETTING MIGHTY BORED
theyre only buying 300, thats enough for sparta, or any other kind of armed force
a couple an airforce base, its easy.