The US Air Force was faced with a problem in 2010: the components from which supercomputers are built cost a lot of money. The US Air Force Research Laboratory wanted to have a mega computer in order to advance AI research, to analyze satellite images and to improve radar systems (via:The standard). Fortunately, the PS3 was significantly cheaper, which is why a supercomputer cluster was built from 1,760 consoles.
Supercomputer Condor was very powerful at the time and relatively cheap thanks to the PS3
That's what it's about:The PS3 had installed a surprisingly powerful processor at the time, which at some point alsoUS-Air Forcehas become aware. Supposedly, individual supercomputer components are said to have cost $ 10,000 at the time, but which were also found in the PS3 (via:Cleveland).
That is why the clever scientists of the American Air Force simply had tons of PS3 consoles and then put together a supercomputer. In addition to the consoles, howeveralso 168 graphics cards and 84 extra serversused.
The Condor cluster came to aComputing power of 500. From today's perspective, these are not too many, but at that time it was a lot. At that time, the supercomputer should even have landed in 33th place of the fastest supercomputers in the whole world.
In comparisonThe fastest computer usually delivered 2,566 teraflops, but for a short time at the top but even a proud 4,701 teraflops. Supercomputers currently have over a million teraflops.
The PS5 Pro trumps with 16.7 teraflops.To build a supercomputer that can keep up with the Condor cluster from 15 years ago, you currently only need 30 PS5 pro consoles. Compared to the 1,700 PS3 units, this is a fairly impressive jump.
Overall, the supercomputer from 2010 is said tocost around $ 2 millionas the Director of the Air Force Research Laboratory computer department Mark Barnell explains. Without the help of the PlayStation 3 consoles, the good piece would probably have cost between $ 20 and $ 40 million at the time. This means that only a tenth or twenty of the actual price had to be issued.
How many consoles do you stand around at home that you could assemble into a supercomputer cluster?
