PS3's Cell Processor Powers World's Fastest Supercomputer

The United States' nuclear stockpile in Los Alamos will soon be monitored by a powerful computer made out of parts you might have in your living room - the PlayStation 3's Cell processor. Nicknamed the Roadrunner, the IBM-built supercomputer is comprised completely of off-the-shelf components, including nearly 7,000 dual-core AMD Opteron processors and almost 13,000 Cell processors. The machine can process more than one thousand trillion calculations per second, making it twice as fast as the world's current fastest computer, IBM's Blue Gene.

If only we had had access to this sort of technology back in 1983. The movie WarGames would have been so much better. "Would you like to play a game? How about Resistance: Fall of Man?"

IBM unveils fast new computer for US Energy Dept. [Newsday.com]

Kojima Disappointed With Metal Gear Solid 4

Looks like Kojima Jr. isn't the only one disappointed with Metal Gear Solid. The latest issue of the UK's Edge magazine contains an interview with Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, who expresses disappointment with the latest game in the series, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. It isn't so much the gameplay itself as it is the graphics.

"Game-wise, it's pretty close to the original vision: you sneak into the battlefield and can choose whether to do a stealth game or interfere with the battle more directly. But the graphic, side things like motion-blending and the size of the map, totally was not accomplished to my original vision - to my satisfaction.

U.S. Air Force Wants To Buy 300 PS3s For Cell "Assessment"

Ripped from tomorrow's press releases comes word that the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has submitted a purchase request for a bunch of PlayStation 3s—three hundred of the 40GB model, to be exact. They're not (officially) intended for playing Grand Theft Auto IV or training pilots under the harsh control conditions of Lair, mind you, but for "conducting a technology assessment of certain cell processors." Uh huh.

The Sony marketing coup disguised as purchasing request reads "The processors in the Sony PlayStation 3 are the only brand on the market that utilizes the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost." We can only assume they're going to be running something fairly code intensive in a Linux install or that an announcement about the the War On Giant Enemy Crabs is imminent.

Presolicitation Notice: 70 — 40 GB Console Systems [FBO.gov via PS3mods]