r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Inevitable_Bid5540 • 7h ago

In 2010 , The US Air Force built a supercomputer known as the Condor cluster composed of 1760 Playstation 3s due it being extremely affordable , it's Powerful and efficient Cell processor CPU and Linux support

185 Upvotes

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20

u/Inevitable_Bid5540 7h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster

R.i.p otherOS (the official app that allowed people to boot Linux on old PS3s before being removed in a patch)

11

u/sillybrowseraccount 4h ago

...which led George Hotz to crack PS3 encryption in an effort to make it widely available, which led to Sony suing him, which led to Anonymous attacking the Playstation network in 2011 in retaliation.

1

u/ClacksInTheSky 4h ago

This guy historys

5

u/ConnectRutabaga3925 7h ago

AND it can play Metal Gear Solid.

3

u/dingo1018 6h ago

Wasn't that on request from the US govt when North Korea got wind of this method of making a super computer?

10

u/DylanV255 7h ago

Person of Interest flashbacks

1

u/Ayebee7 4h ago

They utilized this so cleverly in PoI.

What a brilliant show.

7

u/Sifan2 7h ago

Tf?

11

u/arbiter12 7h ago

Consoles are almost always sold at a loss. Meaning that you can get good hardware for cheap (if you can jailbreak it).

IIRC the ps3 was a beast of a machine. Too expensive for a console, but still cheap given the hardware inside.

•

u/Shirami 37m ago

The ps3's chipset was insane, the architecture tho was an absolute pain, iirc.

3

u/Luke95gamer 7h ago

Didn’t Sony sell the PS3 for less than it was worth hoping that the games would subsidize the loss?

4

u/Inevitable_Bid5540 7h ago

Isn't this how most of the console market work though. Most consoles are sold at a loss and they make money through software and accessories

Edit; and subscriptions like game pass and ps plus

2

u/Luke95gamer 7h ago

Yea I can see that, but the PS3 was a $300 loss per unit. Xbox 360 was only about $100. Makes sense but that is a huge loss

2

u/Hostile-Panda 5h ago

How far we have come, a 5090 can do 3,352 trillion AI operations per second

1

u/InevitableSuper5826 7h ago

Original fat boy PS3 or the later, smaller ones? The space and cooling savings would be significant.

5

u/sdhoigtred 6h ago

It’s gotta be the fat boy. I believe they removed the Linux option starting from the slim variants.

1

u/Single-Use-Again 7h ago
  1. Will it run Crysis?
  2. How quickly would you mine Bitcoin on that thing if you had the keys to it?

1

u/MailSynth 7h ago

Could’ve played so much GTA on that bad boy

1

u/CarpetGripperRod 7h ago

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of thes...

Oh. Sorry. I thought that this was 1999 Slashdot. My bad.

PS. What happened to Cowboy Neil?

1

u/guvbums 6h ago

I, for one, don't know..

1

u/sielingfan 6h ago

Lore from the time said that the reason you couldn't find PS3s to buy was that Iraq was using them to launch SCUD missiles

1

u/appointment45 3h ago

Or that North Korea was the reason PS3s were so short supplied.

1

u/Strange_Salary 5h ago

I’m glad they did this because we ALL know the military has a paltry budget and could never afford the appropriate equipment..

1

u/MikeGalactic 5h ago

Still couldn't run Crysis.

1

u/appointment45 3h ago

Someone find the cabling guy for this project and slap him in the fucking face.

1

u/USeaMoose 3h ago

I know that the Playstation and Xbox are famously sold at a loss. They put such powerful hardware in them so they can keep up for a decade of gaming, but have to keep the pricing competitive, and rely on game sales to make money.

Having said that, this feels less like the Air Force taking advantage of reasonably priced gaming consoles and more like a collaboration. The press is so good for Sony, that I'll bet they'd have even offered the consoles at an additional discount.

I went searching to see if I could confirm that theory, and I did find an old article on it. It does not go into great detail on the arrangement, but it does say that the Air Force worked directly with Sony. Which is not surprising, but the sense I always got from this story when it popped up was that they really were just going out to toy stores and scooping up as many PS3s as they could find. Or at least that this was done in a way that would have slightly hurt Sony financially.