US Military PS3 Based Supercomputer In the Works? US Military To Order 2,000 PS3 Consoles for USAF Research Lab (336 PS3 Cluster Already Operational)

Remember all that nonsense that terrorists could build a cruise missile
with a Playstation 2? Well, that was bunk, but, the real life United
States Air Force has an interest in PlayStation 3s, and it's not for
gaming. The air-divisionย of the US military wants the Sony gaming
consoles for it's cell processor, as it hopes to build a supercomputing
cluster for research purposes.
The USAF already owns 336 PS3, clustered together for supercomputer
research, but after their research program was awarded $2 million by the
US Department of Defense, they placed an order for another 2,200, to add
to their cluster of super computers. This isn't as far fetched as it
might sound, as the Cell processor featured inside the PS3 is the same
featured inside the IBM Roadrunner, the world's second fastest super
computer. (Albeit, the PS3 features eight Cell processors, the
Roadrunner features just a bit more at over 12,000). The Cell processor
came about after a joint-venture between Sony, IBM and Toshiba.
Blog Sony Insider reports that the Air Force's choice is more cost
effective, as a comparable custom-built supercomputer solution could of
cost the Air Force 13 times and considerable more engineering time than
their solution of buying over 2,000 PlayStation 3s (and the
supercomputers probably don't play Blu-Ray movies, either). The Air
Force specifically named the Intel Xeon-based supercomputers as being
too slow and too expensive for their needs.
The needs of the cluster willย primarilyย be research, but possible
future Air Force applications include video processing, radar
enhancement and investigations into 'neuromorphic' (or human
thought-like) computing. Another goal of the PlayStation 3's cluster
research is to see if the Cell processor can be used in other military
applications.