I was there, but not on that project. It worked well. The reasons it was attractive were the cost savings, but more importantly the unique aspects of the Cell processor in the PS3s.
What's the best lengthy write-up of the Air Force's PS3 cluster (if any exist)? From the headlines, I had always thought it to be some marketing gimmick.
Why is that? What was it about the Cell processor at the time that was desirable?
Afaik PS3s were sold at a loss for Sony, so it seems likely that they were very beefy computationally wise, but I am use USAF could have gotten an incredible deal with Intel, IBM or AMD, so what is it?
IBM, Sony, and Toshiba worked together to develop STI, the architecture behind the Cell and PS3. What was really unique about the Cell was two things: it was the first dual-core processor machine, and it had 8 specialized streamlined cores as well: the SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements).
Michael Van de Luur of Gorilla Games said in an interview [1] “Even desktop chips nowadays, the fastest Intel stuff you can buy, is not by far as powerful as the Cell CPU, but it’s very difficult to get power out of the Cell. I think it was ahead of its age, because it was a little bit more like how GPUs work nowadays, but it was maybe not balanced nicely and it was too hard to use. It overshot a little bit in power and undershot in usability, but it was definitely visionary.”
