Friday, December 18, 2009

The US Air Force's Holiday Wish List: 2500 PlayStations

Leave your beer and pizza at the door, please (Image: Air Force Research Lab)

From The New Scientist:

The US Air Force Research Lab recently put out a request for 2200 Sony PlayStation 3 games consoles. The military researchers want to wired them up with the 300 or so they already have to make a type of supercomputer never seen before.

But it won't be the ultimate gaming system to teach pilots how to blast enemies out of the sky. Instead it will analyse radar and simulate the workings of brains.

The consoles are desirable because of the unique abilities of the chip at their heart. Jointly designed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM, the Cell chip is designed for the speedy and efficient graphics processing that gaming requires, as well as for number crunching.

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