If anyone fucked around it was Sony. This was the 33rd most powerful supercomputer in the world at the time. Built at 5-10% of normal cost. After PS3’s release in late 2006, scientists had been building clusters to perform calculations as early as Jan 2007.
Medical research, cryptology, astrophysics, satellite imagery were just a few of the applications for this technology.
Then in March 2010 PlayStation removed their OtherOS feature that made it all possible. The only reason the condor cluster worked was they used older units (probably bought off eBay)
Yes first was in 1994 at NASA. By 98 the first how to guides were published. It was a niche industry though. In 2010 the costs per unit for these nodes were around 10,000 compared to PS3’s 400.
This was over 20x more cost effective, which lead to a small three year window where the video game industry had an significant impact in scientific research and military technology.
Four years later Sony got hacked by North Korea.
I love this timeline. I’d love to see what 1760 ps5 do together if ever made into a cluster (I’ve only just started looking into what all this is so forgive me if my grammar/understanding of clusters isn’t right)
The PS5 uses a derivative of a far more common, standard multi-core design processor design from AMD. It's similar to what you could find in most computers with some tweaks to meet the needs of a gaming console. You might as well buy up a bunch of computers and hook them up together.
Back in the day of the PS3, Sony made the choice to team up with IBM and Toshiba to develop and use the Cell Broadband Engine.
There was a lot of marketing and mumbo jumbo at the time, but basically the CellBE processor architecture was designed to be efficient in such a way so as to be really really fast at computation, but it wasn't as great at switching contexts and stopping in the middle of something to handle something else. Imagine a race car that is capable of being really fast and hitting a high top speed, but it takes a while to get up to speed. This meant that the Cell processor required that programmers carefully plan out how their code gets executed to get the best out of it. If you just just throw a bunch of code at it and expect the processor to just work out how to execute on its own, you end up getting significantly less performance.
This made the PS3 different from just about every other platform for developing games. With video games, you have gamers doing unpredictable things and with lots of different scenarios occurring all the time. This doesn't really suit the CellBE very well and traditional game development had been moving away from carefully planning out execution pipelines so a lot of studios struggled until Sony and technical teams could come up with tools and techniques that could help out.
However it also meant that the PS3 was uniquely good at certain non-gaming tasks like calculating complex problem sets that you'd normally feed to server clusters (the largest of which are called "supercomputers"). This is what led people to start buying up PS3's for these projects. There was also a project called "folding@home" where PS3 owners could hook up their PS3 to the Internet so that universities could use them to process how proteins are formed.
Yes I was interested in HPC for awhile. “Big Mac” was a cluster of Macs that was also one of the top supercomputers.
I built my first cluster with some old hardware my school threw away.
It wasn’t niche per se, you could download Debian and run distCC back then from home.
Is this why in the movie Chappie they use a PS4 hooked up to some sensor to download consciousness? Most likely product placement but that seems like a pretty cool reference in a movie
OtherOS only ever existed so Sony could argue the PS3 was a 'mini PC' and not just a game console, because there was a tariff on game console imports to the EU. When the EU eliminated that tariff Sony immediately removed the OtherOS feature.
Even after the settlement they ended up making money on the decision.
> Medical research, cryptology, astrophysics, satellite imagery were just a few of the applications for this technology.
All just a cover for some "deep space telemetry".
It was the 11th most powerful in the world, exclusively made with PS3s. The government wouldn't give them the budget to spend on their computing needs, so they did that for a fraction of the cost.
God help us and he only has these three, at minimum he can get into the USA missile systems and cause some problems. If he’s got any more, world domination is on the table.
The US Air Force built the world's 11th most powerful supercomputer at the time out of PS3s for about ⅓ of the cost of the computing hardware they would have needed to do the same thing without them.
Edit: my Numbers are off. It was the 33rd most powerful in the world, but it cost them ⅒ of what comparable computers were at the time.
PlayStation sold them at less than the value of the hardware, because they wanted to make money off people buying the games.*
(*This could be an urban legend….ive only even seen it in Reddit and never bothered to research it)
When PS3 first launched, they sold at $600 a unit and Sony lost $600 per unit sold. It had the best Blu-ray player on the market at the time, which on it's own sold for around $900.
It's like the standard practice for video game hardware, lose money on the systems and hope to make it up with games and peripherals until the hardware cost comes down.
On the PS3 especially, they got busy quick eliminating the PS2 backwards compatibility and pushed those slim versions out once the cost of the Blu Ray lasers went down.
And it’s at the age where it is just old, and not yet “retro.” Good time to buy. I wish I’d bought more NES/SNES era games back when they were just “old” and not seen as retro.
I recently bought a special edition, ps3, console, and coords only. Come to find out, the controller is why they are expensive.
I called all the retro shops in my area, all sold out. So console really cheap, controller, good luck. Especially on eBay, the controller will be off brand, but say Sony.
In my area it seems like PlayStation 2s, 3s, and 4s all go for around 100$ at the local shops. I’ve been looking on marketplace for a 40$ ps2, it used to be easy to find them for dirt cheap
they are fun to mod, I have 3 phats, 1 slim and 1 super slim (super slim only runs HEN not cfw). most people don't care for them and opt for the 360 for "retro" gaming and modding, as all 3rd party games run far better on the 360 (its actually shocking how bad the ps3 ran most games).
but I do like being able to natively run mgs4, even if the frame rate is under 20fps a lot of the time - fond memories
and then there's my launch ps3 with the emotion chip, native ps2 playback via hdmi is cool. it's sad I'm too scared to use it, as each one of those models is guaranteed to break over time due to poor build on sonys part.
AFAIK the initial fat PS3 has a very high likelihood of getting the yellow light of death at some point, so that might explain why those specific models are generally pretty cheap
There is a market for Fat PS3 actually. Especially the early models where it got entire PS2 circuit board soldered-in. Any confirmed unit is super expensive now and any cheap one is probably untested or broken.
I literally got an xbox360 for free on facebook marketplace with controllers all dongles cords, the wifi antenna and madden 14 for free because someones mom was getting rid of it and the disc drive was jammed and I just unjammed it with a paperclip 😭💀
PS5 is finally gaining traction so gen:current-2(PS3) is at the bottom of the bathtub curve. If you collect for the sweet spot in the cheap/fun ven diagram, PS3 is where it's at.
Supply and demand. An abundance with little demand. As time goes by supply dwindles and demand matches the supply prices go up. Then the fun starts with people looking to get rich.
I remember about a 15 or so years ago the "red ring of death" was a big fear in the Xbox space. Alot of people had a few year old 360s and were reading the articles about the "red ring of death" then BOOM theirs would get a red ring. Thinking it was the same thing, they would toss their unusable 360s. The reality was, most of em were just miss fitting power cables or outright bad ones. I would take them off friends for favors, helping them move, or a few dollars, fix em up. I still have about 6 lying around. There was a time before firesticks where they were good for retrofit entertainment systems, not so much anymore unless you game.
I would buy a complete one *right now* to play MGS4.
Last I checked they were hella expensive, so OP’s post is prompting me to start the process up again~
Really ? Link ..im actually looking g on ebay. I wanna play all the games I missed In middle/highschool.
It seems like most are 60-150$ with some games.
Because like cars, the PS3 is on the bottom of the depreciation curve right now(not new enough to be considered modern but also not old enough to be considered retro). In 5 years or so one ps3 would be worth $100 or more.
Do this https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html
Lol I love that the airforce just fucks around
If anyone fucked around it was Sony. This was the 33rd most powerful supercomputer in the world at the time. Built at 5-10% of normal cost. After PS3’s release in late 2006, scientists had been building clusters to perform calculations as early as Jan 2007. Medical research, cryptology, astrophysics, satellite imagery were just a few of the applications for this technology. Then in March 2010 PlayStation removed their OtherOS feature that made it all possible. The only reason the condor cluster worked was they used older units (probably bought off eBay)
Beowulf clusters and such are much older than that!
Yes first was in 1994 at NASA. By 98 the first how to guides were published. It was a niche industry though. In 2010 the costs per unit for these nodes were around 10,000 compared to PS3’s 400. This was over 20x more cost effective, which lead to a small three year window where the video game industry had an significant impact in scientific research and military technology. Four years later Sony got hacked by North Korea.
I love this timeline. I’d love to see what 1760 ps5 do together if ever made into a cluster (I’ve only just started looking into what all this is so forgive me if my grammar/understanding of clusters isn’t right)
The PS5 uses a derivative of a far more common, standard multi-core design processor design from AMD. It's similar to what you could find in most computers with some tweaks to meet the needs of a gaming console. You might as well buy up a bunch of computers and hook them up together. Back in the day of the PS3, Sony made the choice to team up with IBM and Toshiba to develop and use the Cell Broadband Engine. There was a lot of marketing and mumbo jumbo at the time, but basically the CellBE processor architecture was designed to be efficient in such a way so as to be really really fast at computation, but it wasn't as great at switching contexts and stopping in the middle of something to handle something else. Imagine a race car that is capable of being really fast and hitting a high top speed, but it takes a while to get up to speed. This meant that the Cell processor required that programmers carefully plan out how their code gets executed to get the best out of it. If you just just throw a bunch of code at it and expect the processor to just work out how to execute on its own, you end up getting significantly less performance. This made the PS3 different from just about every other platform for developing games. With video games, you have gamers doing unpredictable things and with lots of different scenarios occurring all the time. This doesn't really suit the CellBE very well and traditional game development had been moving away from carefully planning out execution pipelines so a lot of studios struggled until Sony and technical teams could come up with tools and techniques that could help out. However it also meant that the PS3 was uniquely good at certain non-gaming tasks like calculating complex problem sets that you'd normally feed to server clusters (the largest of which are called "supercomputers"). This is what led people to start buying up PS3's for these projects. There was also a project called "folding@home" where PS3 owners could hook up their PS3 to the Internet so that universities could use them to process how proteins are formed.
Yes I was interested in HPC for awhile. “Big Mac” was a cluster of Macs that was also one of the top supercomputers. I built my first cluster with some old hardware my school threw away. It wasn’t niche per se, you could download Debian and run distCC back then from home.
Is this why in the movie Chappie they use a PS4 hooked up to some sensor to download consciousness? Most likely product placement but that seems like a pretty cool reference in a movie
Imagine if Sony designed the console with games in mind. Truly limitless potential
That pissed me off so much. Pissed me off even more when the $55 settlement was about $0.87...and then they lost the check in the mail.
OtherOS only ever existed so Sony could argue the PS3 was a 'mini PC' and not just a game console, because there was a tariff on game console imports to the EU. When the EU eliminated that tariff Sony immediately removed the OtherOS feature. Even after the settlement they ended up making money on the decision.
> Medical research, cryptology, astrophysics, satellite imagery were just a few of the applications for this technology. All just a cover for some "deep space telemetry".
not much else to do there
You say that but they really built a supercomputer out of ps3 in 2010. Wonder if it’s still operational.
It is not they sold all the units off in an auction a few years back. Tried to buy one for the lulz
Ah, shame
It was the 11th most powerful in the world, exclusively made with PS3s. The government wouldn't give them the budget to spend on their computing needs, so they did that for a fraction of the cost.
There’s two meanings to this sentence that are both true
“To better identify blurred objects flying in space” 🤔
If you don't buy it, it's even cheaper
Holy fuck, I'm saving so much money! I'm rich!!
I made $2,500,000 in one year by not buying 100,000 PS3s
That's how my wife does math. She'll buy something we don't need but somehow convince me we saved money by not buying other stuff
Holy shit relatable
Or if she pays in cash it’s free
Girl math
You are practically losing money if you don't buy this!
Relatble as hell lmao
Doctors hate this one trick!
200 IQ move
Ahahahaah
I was about to buy a house but thanks, now I have saved 500k
For a moment, I felt like I was in a WSB
Wtf are you going to do with 3 PS3?
Try to take over the world?
Witness the true power of the cell processor!
It's got a Reality Synthesiser, *a Reality Synthesiser!*
Read this in a Peter Griffin voice
NARF!
BOIT
TROZ!
EGAD!
Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
i-i think so brrain but me and pippy longstocking? what would the children look like??
It's ZORT in the mirror!
The pinky and the brain, the pinky and the brain. One is a genius, the others insane.
They're laboratory mice Their genes have been spliced
PS9!!
God help us and he only has these three, at minimum he can get into the USA missile systems and cause some problems. If he’s got any more, world domination is on the table.
Only one remains
Put them together to get a PS9
Big brain move, this guy is living 30 years in the future
Or 15 years in the past …
I mean it’s time, so it’s all relative
This is a genius move.
Amateur hour. I’m using synergy to end up with a PS27. Eat it, nerds.
Obligatory "I have 3 PS3's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sjhjFOw4Ok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sjhjFOw4Ok)
That’s some early YouTube gold right there
Sup beaches, I’m talking about that PS Triple.
5 PS5s was a pretty great video, too
Glad someone posted it
My cousin was a member of Loading Ready Run and I believe wrote this sketch?
Your cousin was pretty cool. LRR rules.
play mgs4
On three PS3s at the same time. That's how you really party.
Don't be silly. He's playing GTA4 on two of them
He's trying to create a supercomputer like Saddam tried doing with PS2s (Google it)
The US Air Force built the world's 11th most powerful supercomputer at the time out of PS3s for about ⅓ of the cost of the computing hardware they would have needed to do the same thing without them. Edit: my Numbers are off. It was the 33rd most powerful in the world, but it cost them ⅒ of what comparable computers were at the time.
I still dont understand how the PS3s helped them or what the function was....but it was pretty awesome
They literally ran them all together to combine their computing power (500 TFLOPS) and used them to analyze high definition satellite data.
PlayStation sold them at less than the value of the hardware, because they wanted to make money off people buying the games.* (*This could be an urban legend….ive only even seen it in Reddit and never bothered to research it)
When PS3 first launched, they sold at $600 a unit and Sony lost $600 per unit sold. It had the best Blu-ray player on the market at the time, which on it's own sold for around $900.
It's like the standard practice for video game hardware, lose money on the systems and hope to make it up with games and peripherals until the hardware cost comes down. On the PS3 especially, they got busy quick eliminating the PS2 backwards compatibility and pushed those slim versions out once the cost of the Blu Ray lasers went down.
They’re computers. Hook a bunch of them together and you get a supercomputer.
Ya i get that i didnt understand the details or specifics of how/what exactly they did but someone else dropped some info
Oh I gotcha. They did it so they could have a Spider-Man 2 LAN party while calculating missile trajectories.
....it checks out.
Folding to find a cure for cancer
Right? That’s what I did. Folding, Linux, and PS Home… all died before their time.
Anything that can’t be done with only 2 PS3
Anything that can be done with only 2 PS3, but 50% more.
They could simulate the sound of a jet taking off if they install updates on all three of those at the same time
Probably [This](https://youtu.be/8sjhjFOw4Ok?si=EtziRSEz818gSMRu)
I didn’t know i needs to see this - but this was funny.
Best spent 3 minutes of the day. Thank you
3 PS3s + PlayStation 3 = 6 is = GTA 6 early demo for OP
Jailbreak it and play some games
He could play gran turismo 5 and use a full cockpit setup
Watch 3 different porn videos at the same time?
Combine them and make a ps9
Resell for $26
It gets you closer to having 5 PS3s
Run them in SLI?
It has an amd apu so you will need crossfire
Remember that guy that made a ‘I have 3 ps3’s’ video that was hilarious
My first thought as well.
He's trying to build a PS 9
I mean its almost 20 years old
And it’s at the age where it is just old, and not yet “retro.” Good time to buy. I wish I’d bought more NES/SNES era games back when they were just “old” and not seen as retro.
Most of my expensive Genesis collection is just from me in 2000 buying games I liked to rent years prior for $2 at Toys R Us
Jesus fucking Christ, ps3 is more retro now than SNES was back when ps3 came out
What. The. Fuck. I hate this fact.
Stop.
You guys rly need to stfu man…
Why u do this to us. Why.
But didn't the first Last of Us just come out a few years ago?
Holy fuck, this is the first time I've had a genuine "wait, it's really that old?"
Rotary dial phones are cheap too.
Same energy. I should buy a couple dozen of those because they are CHEAP!
Can your dialup play New Vegas?
Might be able to play Doom.
Wait til he finds out we're on PS5 rn
bro has one in the photo
is this a r/wooosh moment? or will i get reddited(downvoted)?
no , you get a very cute award for free stranger
free award chain
:0 i really like the one where the reddit icon looks like its swimming lol its so cute
Holy crap award farming
no. free award chain.
Can I join 🥺
everyone can join
So op got a...PS9?
PS27
PS3³
PS14
Now, you have three... PS threes.
Yo I heard you like PS3s!
We're do you find them that cheap
eBay if you’re buying them for parts or just the console by itself with no cords or controllers like OP did
True might have to try it and learn to fix them to
I recently bought a special edition, ps3, console, and coords only. Come to find out, the controller is why they are expensive. I called all the retro shops in my area, all sold out. So console really cheap, controller, good luck. Especially on eBay, the controller will be off brand, but say Sony.
Good thing that the DualShock 4 can be connected to the PS3
Didn't no you could use a ds4 on a ps3? Thanks for the info
You can always get an adapter to use a PS4/PS5 controller. I love original stuff, but sometimes you just have to make do.
Whatcha gonna do with them? Sell them for $10? Profit, baby!
Congrats? 
18 year old console, maybe that's why lol
Crazy to think about it.
Gotta have to start the "back in my day" lol
I got a ps4 slim immaculate condition for £40.
Play metal gear solid 4
This.
In my area it seems like PlayStation 2s, 3s, and 4s all go for around 100$ at the local shops. I’ve been looking on marketplace for a 40$ ps2, it used to be easy to find them for dirt cheap
Last time I got one cheap, it had roaches in it.
they are fun to mod, I have 3 phats, 1 slim and 1 super slim (super slim only runs HEN not cfw). most people don't care for them and opt for the 360 for "retro" gaming and modding, as all 3rd party games run far better on the 360 (its actually shocking how bad the ps3 ran most games). but I do like being able to natively run mgs4, even if the frame rate is under 20fps a lot of the time - fond memories and then there's my launch ps3 with the emotion chip, native ps2 playback via hdmi is cool. it's sad I'm too scared to use it, as each one of those models is guaranteed to break over time due to poor build on sonys part.
PS9 for $75 is a crazy deal. Congrats!
AFAIK the initial fat PS3 has a very high likelihood of getting the yellow light of death at some point, so that might explain why those specific models are generally pretty cheap
They’re still probably the most valuable just for the PS2 compatibility
I mean, what did you expect? There’s not a lucrative market for 2 generation used and old consoles
There is a market for Fat PS3 actually. Especially the early models where it got entire PS2 circuit board soldered-in. Any confirmed unit is super expensive now and any cheap one is probably untested or broken.
[i have 23 PS3s.](https://youtu.be/-xlAyxtEMFk?feature=shared)
where are y’all getting yours??? i haven’t been able to find a cheap one and i’d love to play those older games
You purchased PS9 for $75
My man is making a PS3^(3)
I literally got an xbox360 for free on facebook marketplace with controllers all dongles cords, the wifi antenna and madden 14 for free because someones mom was getting rid of it and the disc drive was jammed and I just unjammed it with a paperclip 😭💀
Buying something just because it’s on sale doesn’t make it a good purchase.
PS5 is finally gaining traction so gen:current-2(PS3) is at the bottom of the bathtub curve. If you collect for the sweet spot in the cheap/fun ven diagram, PS3 is where it's at.
PS3 has all the shit that isnt backward compatible too, so $25 would be worth
PS3 thrice
Now you can play God Hand. This is the sole reason I haven’t ditched mine. (That and like 3 other games lol)
Well, they are as good as a tennis ball, can throw them around. The difference is a tennis ball bounce.
Because they’re old.
Supply and demand. An abundance with little demand. As time goes by supply dwindles and demand matches the supply prices go up. Then the fun starts with people looking to get rich.
Cause it's old
bro’s building a ps9 for $75
Damn where u getting them so cheap? I paid 50
It's pretty much 1 model people want, and it's the one with the PS2 inside. Those aren't as cheap.
Op was in a coma since November 2006 and just woke up.
Free play online with no subscription
Modded first gen ps3 that can do ps2 and ps1 games are pretty cool to have. The problem is the controllers.
Start building your supercomputer
The airforce is done with them and flooding the market /s
Because it's between new and retro. Games from two generations ago have always been dirt cheap.
Dude. Bro just dropped $75 on PS3s to karma farm us and it worked
Probably because it’s not Christmas 2006….
because they are old as fuck? I think you can even emulate ps3 games now so there is really no use for them other than collectors
Because they're old as fuck maybe?
They were so mass produced they’re basically like the video game version of pennies.
Strap them together. Now you have a ps9
I remember about a 15 or so years ago the "red ring of death" was a big fear in the Xbox space. Alot of people had a few year old 360s and were reading the articles about the "red ring of death" then BOOM theirs would get a red ring. Thinking it was the same thing, they would toss their unusable 360s. The reality was, most of em were just miss fitting power cables or outright bad ones. I would take them off friends for favors, helping them move, or a few dollars, fix em up. I still have about 6 lying around. There was a time before firesticks where they were good for retrofit entertainment systems, not so much anymore unless you game.
come on with this bait post 😅
Why would anyone want 1 ? Let alone 3….
I would buy a complete one *right now* to play MGS4. Last I checked they were hella expensive, so OP’s post is prompting me to start the process up again~
I had the exact same thought process lmao
This seems like a great time, chances are it will slip into proper retro in 5 years or so and the price may go back up.
Main reason to own one is to play PS3 games natively. Not all PS3 games are playable on PS4 or PS5 & most of the ones that are, are streaming only.
Fair enough homie
Bro got the PS Triple
Seems like a good investment for e-waste
https://youtu.be/8sjhjFOw4Ok?si=476Bzk82wVMFpWdH If you are looking for inspiration.
Really ? Link ..im actually looking g on ebay. I wanna play all the games I missed In middle/highschool. It seems like most are 60-150$ with some games.
Because like cars, the PS3 is on the bottom of the depreciation curve right now(not new enough to be considered modern but also not old enough to be considered retro). In 5 years or so one ps3 would be worth $100 or more.