US Air Force to Buy 2200 PS3's to conduct SUPER Computer Research!!

[joeorc]

aragod said:

nightsurge said:

Why don't they save themselves the money and just build servers with multiple Cell BE's rather than wasting it on buying actual PS3's then losing performance by clustering?

@Staude:  Maybe you should have read closer.  They ARE discontinuing Cell development.  They ARE NOT re-using the Cell in future projects, they are re-using ASPECTS of the Cell.  Things they learned from using the Cell architecture will carry over but the new products will NOT be Cell variants or Cell successors nor will they have Cells in them.

Guess you don't know much about building supercomputers and cluster networks... Cluster will allways come cheaper than building one supercomputer (or even several that would be required for that task). That is the single reason why they do that.

yup..the PS3 is pretty good at some simulation work and its very cheap than the alternative. and yes IBM will still be using core Cell processor component's, will it be a New Cell processor, umm no will it be LIKE THE Cell processor you bet. the big thing is Cell processor code would still be able to be used, If the design team wanted to use ISA function's in the new Processor. this is a good example of like the x86 processor market.

there is many x86 type's of chip's but they all share the common core ISA

the Same is happening with this part of the HPC market, new processor's from IBM will share the common core of the Cell processor because IBM knows it work's and works very well.