1700 PS3s turned into an Air Force supercomputer
syracuse.com
syracuse.com
Sony issued a firmware update to disable the ability to install a different OS, and that led to a class-action suit against them. In the meantime, George Hotz wrote a hack to restore the OtherOS feature, and Sony is now trying to nail him with DMCA and other copyright violations.
Somewhat complicating the legal situation are Sony's attempts to bring piracy in to the equation: they've argued that removing the ability to run Linux was necessary to prevent piracy, and that Hotz's hack facilitates piracy. Neither claim withstands much scrutiny, as piracy did not become feasible until a Sony employee tweeted their root key, well after they removed the OtherOS feature, and not too long after Sony told the court that Hotz's hack had caused irreparable harm, Sony patched the hole Hotz exploited.
It has also been noted that the PS3 is much cheaper than IBM's Cell blades, and that for certain kinds of supercomputing tasks, that more than makes up for the lack of low-latency high-bandwidth interconnects.
I would be curious to know if they are still losing money from them but I highly doubt this is the case anymore. Anyone actually know about this for sure?
Still, it's hard to say whether the hardware profits from the past year or two would cover Sony's share of the Cell fab upgrade costs (the Cell has been through two process shrinks), let alone make up for the steep losses incurred early in the product cycle. I suspect that the overall long-term profitability of the PS3 platform still depends heavily on their video game sales.
AFAIR the Other OS boot was disabled because of an exploit for ps3-linux that disabled some watchdog mechanism.
"The Air Force is also using the Condor to process ground-based radar images of space objects, again with extraordinary clarity. Barnell shows images of a space shuttle orbiting Earth at 5 miles a second. Without Condor processing, the shuttle image is a blurry black triangle. With Condor processing, it is sharp and distinct. It’s clear that its payload doors are open."
I really had no idea that you could process radar to this clarity with off the shelf 2006 technology.
A Ka band radar, for example, uses centimeter wavelengths, and W band radars are 3mm waves. I've heard that the radars used for tracking objects in orbit can image clearly enough to allow you to estimate the capabilities of an enemy's spy satellite based on the sizes of its antennas and cameras.
I bet this was true at the time, but today you can buy blade servers with later generations of the same processors[1].
edit: nope. Just look at the per-blade price, yowza.
[1] http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/hardware/servers/q...
It's possible that by going to Sony, the airforce was able to ditch the tender requirement (no one else is supplying PS3s ...) thus making it possible for them to get things going, rather than waiting for 2 years until all the paperwork is done (and then getting 2 year old technology, because that's what has been bid on and approved).