Here is bank of PS3's they are using for dedicated ranked servers for Warhawk. There are appearently several rows like this. Warhawk will also offer player hosted games as well.

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/08/8-11-07-warhawk-servers.jpg




This is surprising to me, because of the number of PS3's they had to have to support this. It looks like there are thousands of them. For some reason, I didn't think the dedicated servers were just plan old PS3. But I wonder how many thousands of PS3's Sony sold for this project?

Also, they make the interesting point that dedicated servers don't always have lower lag, because playing somone only a few hops away from you will be better than playing on a dedicated server across the country. They look like they have a good compromise between dedicated servers and player hosted.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/11/sony-erects-massive-ps3-server-cluster-for-warhawk-mayhem/

I'd rather play my buddies on a dedicated server private match than for one of us to be hosting--no host advantage. Sure, whoever has less lag to the server has a slight advantage but not like host advantage!

but not like host advantage!
IMO If your connection is good with the host, the host advantage is nominal in most cases.

looks good, but they should also release linux servers for those wanting to run true dedicated home servers...

also check out
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/08/08/behind-the-curtain-the-warhawk-servers/