Air Force Uses PlayStation 3 To Process Satellite And Radar Images

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Written By:
Rob Port

Dec 3, 2010
11:21am

Well, not just one PlayStation 3 sitting under someone’s desk, but rather 1,760 of the gaming units strung together.

What happens when you stack up and string together 1,760 PlayStation 3s together? You get the Defense Department’s fastest interactive computer, the 33rd biggest computer in the world, that’s what.

Yes, the Air Force’s crazy PS3 computer consists of all those gaming consoles, stripped of their Blu-ray functionality, connected to 168 seperate graphical processing units and 84 coordinating servers. It’s used “for things like research into AI, fast processing of satellite pictures and the enhancement of radar.” And you thought just being able to play Uncharted 2 was cool.

This may be the coolest thing I’ve read in a month.

But I wonder why they hacked the PS3′s like this. Was it cheaper than developing a system for this purpose?