Sony's Playstation 3: GPU and supercomputer rolled in one game console.
Posted on 12/13/2009 10:31:15 PM PST by myknowledge
The military is a major user of supercomputers (the fastest computers on the planet). These machines were first developed, as were the first computers, for military applications. These ultra-powerful computers are used for code breaking, and to help design weapons (including nukes) and equipment (especially electronics). The military is also needs lots of computing power for data mining (pulling useful information, about the enemy, from ever larger masses of information.)
Because there's never enough money to buy all the super-computers (which are super expensive) needed, military researchers have come up with ways to do it cheaper. A decade ago, it was military researchers who figured out how to use of GPUs (Graphic Processing Units, from high end graphic cards) for non-graphic computing. GPUs do something similar to what supercomputers do (lots of math calculations of a fairly simple type), and eventually the manufacturers of GPUs realized that there was a commercial (not just military) demand for GPUs serving as supercomputers.
Three years ago, the Tesla supercomputer add-on for PCs appeared on the market. This was basically an Nvidia graphics board tweaked to act like a supercomputer, rather than a device that put 3-D, photo-realistic game graphics on your computer screen. The latest version of this system will give you a teraflop of computing power for $10,000.
The Cell Processor on the PlayStation 3 (PS 3) is also a GPU, and that GPU alone was used to built several of the fastest supercomputers on the planet. But military researchers were quick to note that some versions of the PS 3 could be tweaked to run Linux, and the software required to produce supercomputer results from the PS 3s Cell processor. Since the PS 3 is sold below cost (so buyers will purchase lots of very profitable games), the U.S. military has bought thousands of PS 3s and used them as inexpensive supercomputers.
Sony's Playstation 3: GPU and supercomputer rolled in one game console.
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WHat the airforce did(very clever) was to rip off sony. IN A BIG WAY.
You see, sony loses money on every PS3 it sells. It’s what they call a loss leader. They make up for it by selling games to play on the PS3. When you have a PS3, you can only play sony games on it. So sony can rip you off on the games once they got you convinced to buy a PS3.
the airforce guys were very clever and figured out they were buying some fairly powerful computer chips for less than it cost to make them. So they bought a couple thousand of those PS3s and ripped them apart for the chips, and linked them together to create a cheap supercomputer. Sony just sold thousands of PS3s to the airforce with ZERO PROSPECT of selling any high priced games to them to make up for the loss on the PS3 sales.
What other militaries have bought this machine? Iran? Russia? China?
2000 or so machines would be but a drop in Sony’s bucket of sales for that model.
I wonder how they avoided DMCA issues. If it’s illegal to hack the system as is, isn’t it just as verboten to reverse engineer the central chip to serve as a standalone processor?
“So they bought a couple thousand of those PS3s and ripped them apart for the chips.”
Even more interesting if true. Are you sure they “ripped them apart”, or did they install Linux and link the unmodified boxes with something like Rocks, or another Linux cluster distribution. The technology has been around for quite awhile, and seems to be limited by the number of boxes a developer was willing to purchase and link together. Obviously, in the case of DOD, price is less of a constraint and they could get a bunch of computing power for the buck by doing this. Just curious if you are sure they were broken up. Could be, but it is quite possible they were simply clustered as intact PS3’s. It would be interesting to know this.
Just so everybody is aware, computers made from GPUs are not the same as general-purpose supercomputers, their awesome power can only be harnessed for embarassingly parallel operations. So for certain uses, it’s a great idea. For many other uses, traditional, expensive supercomputers (all of which are based on thousands of nodes made of off-the-rack CPUs) are best.
I thought the PS3 only allowed the user to run Linux in a mode such that the user only had access to one processor and zero access to the graphics processor (well, no acceleration, but you do have access to the display buffer). Maybe this was hacked? I never heard about the PS3 being hacked, but I really don’t pay attention to those things as much as I used to.
Also, this article claims that the Cell processor is a GPU ... it is not a graphics processor ... it is multiprocessor system-on-a-chip. You could use the Cell to render graphics, but that would be a waste seeing that a perfectly fine GPU exists in the PS3.
I think Sony pitched Linux support since some users were installing emulators and running old games for free. I know there were a few Linux distros available that made this a piece of cake (never tried those). Sony is now posting a lot of old PS1 titles for sale on their store.
“the airforce guys were very clever and figured out they were buying some fairly powerful computer chips for less than it cost to make them ....”
Actually, a more likely scenario is that they worked out a deal with Sony to unlock the PS3 so that it becomes a more general purpose computer instead of a game machine.
Removing the chips in a PS3 is no easy task. It’s not like the old days where the chips were mounted on the PCB with thru-hole components or surface mount pins. The Cell has hundreds of little solder balls for “pins”. You can remove this kind of chip packaging from a board, but it is very labor intensive and not very reliable.
You also need detailed information on the processor to program the system. Assuming the system hasn’t been hacked, you really can’t do much with the PS3 in Linux mode since there is a lot of restriction as to the hardware you can use on the PS3.
Sorry .... after a quick check, you do have access to 6 of the 7 processors in the Cell when running Linux.
So, for a few thou I could have a supercomputer in my basement or something.
“Sony just sold thousands of PS3s to the airforce with ZERO PROSPECT of selling any high priced games to them to make up for the loss on the PS3 sales.”
That isn’t a rip off by the USAF, that is stupidity by Sony.
While you are correct that working on BGA components is not for the average Joe, we are talking about the military here. They have plenty of skilled personnel and equipment at hand to efficiently mount and unmount such area array package devices with almost zero difficulty or defects.
The main thing that puts working on these components out of reach of the average tech is that the hand assembly normally requires an x-ray to confirm all connections are on pad and properly flowed.
A Teraflop? OMG... Then again, now that this has been published, the Iranians will got out and buy up all the PlayStations...
A Teraflop? OMG... Then again, now that this has been published, the Iranians will go out and buy up all the PlayStations...
How do you feel about the Japanese not paying anything close to the cost of our military to defend their country? I'm sure they would prefer to defend themselves but they lost that right several times over.
(This author really likes parentheses).
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