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Friday, December 4, 2009

US Air Force's Holiday Shopping Spree: 2,200 PlayStation 3s | Motherboard

US Air Force's Holiday Shopping Spree: 2,200 PlayStation 3s

Posted by Alex_Pasternack on Friday, Nov 27, 2009


We already know that we don’t need air force pilots to drop bombs on terrorist dinners anymore, just gamers manning drones. And eventually, gamers flying virtual drones. And eventually robots flying virtual drones in the form of manga characters.

To get there and other places, the Air Force is buying 2,200 PlayStation3s. They’ll use them to build a Linux supercomputer, and not, mind you, to build a massive array of DIY PS3 grilles. (They’re already set with grilles.)

They are not however already set when it comes to PS3 supercomputers. Their current one, made of 336 of the old-style consoles at a cost of $118,000, has already been used for a few applications not currently available on the regular stand-alone, non-supercomputer PS3. Those uses include, says Information Week, “processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and ‘neuromorphic’ computing, or building computers with brain-like properties.”

Read more...
http://www.motherboard.tv/2009/11/27/us-air-force-s-black-friday-shopping-spree-2-200-ps3s

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