Source: abcnews.go.com

Sony's popular PlayStation 3 gaming console. Thousands of them.

The Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., recently issued a request for proposal indicating its intention to purchase 2,200 PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles.

But the military researchers don't plan to play "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" or any of the season's other blockbuster games. They plan to string the consoles together into a massive supercomputer and study how well they can enhance the military's high-performance computing systems.

PS3s Offer High Performance at a Good Price

"The PS3s offer some outstanding performance for the price," said Richard Linderman, senior scientist for advanced computing architectures at the Air Force Research Laboratory. "It's an opportunity to leverage the large gaming market and get those kinds of cost efficiencies which are more along the lines of high-performance computing."

What makes the PlayStation so interesting to Linderman and his bargain-hunting colleagues is the PS3's mega-powerful Cell processor, which was created jointly by IBM, Sony and Toshiba.

According to a document accompanying the Air Force RFP, a server configured with two 3.2GHz cell processors can cost up to $8,000, while two Sony PS3s cost just a fraction of that price at about $600.

The two cell processors are about 33 percent more powerful than the PS3s, but the document went on to say that the PS3s are still more cost-effective.

Click the link to read the whole article.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GadgetGuide/air-force-thousands-playstations/story?id=9272180&page=2

good read, nice find ^_^

This is reaaaaaalllly damn old. It was site news almost 2 years ago. As for what they want, can't remember.

Target practise?

BS you can tell me a couple of those PS3s don't end up playing MW2 :P

good Read tho.

That's a lie, they just want them for Uncharted 2

No ? This is new not 2 years old. The PS3s cost just 300 Dollar recently and this is new afterthe slim launch. Ofocurse there were more projects like this but the Airforce bought 2200 Ps3s just recently. And this article is new to me too.

poor sony.
2200 PS3's gone and not a game or accessory sale to show for it

Answer: because they include Cell processors sold at a loss, and Cell processors are quite powerful for number crunching applications.

See, I didn't need to write a multi-paragraph article to answer the question.

Spankey said: poor sony. 2200 PS3's gone and not a game or accessory sale to show for it

lol im sure sony don't mind!!2200 more consoles sold for sony oh yeah!