US Air Force Purchases 2,200 PlayStation 3 Consoles

The US Air Force expands it's PS3 supercomputer cluster.

According to Information Week, the US Air Force plans to enhance their supercomputer cluster in Rome, NY by purchasing 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles.

Currently there are 336 PlayStation 3 consoles in the cluster. The Air Force hopes to take advantage of the PS3's cell processor by figuring out where cell processor based hardware and software can be used in military applications.

The Air Force is using the cluster in order to develop high definition composite radar images from multiple radar images with a technique known as Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Formation. Other applications the Air Force is testing includes processing high definition videos and advancing "neuromorphic computing"(computers with properties similar to a brain).

vudu

11/23/2009 at 02:01 PM

I wonder if this sort of stuff pisses off Sony. On one hand it's free press. On the other, they're selling these consoles at a loss and it seems unlikely that the USAF is going to purchase enough games & movies to make up for it.

Lukasz Balicki Staff Alumnus

11/23/2009 at 04:36 PM

I'm sure Sony likes this since it essentially tells everyone that a PS3 is used for more applications besides gaming and multimedia functions. If Sony didn't like things like this then they would of never launched folding at home.

Sony also donated a bunch of PS3s to smaller organizations in order to make these small PS3 super computer clusters.

PixlBit