US Air Force seeking 300 PS3s for "technology assessment"
By Donald Melanson 
posted March 5th 2008 5:54PM
posted March 5th 2008 5:54PM
We've already seen the PlayStation 3 put to use for some non-gaming tasks (other than playing Blu-ray movies), and it now looks like the U.S. Air Force is aiming to get in on the act as well, with it recently putting out a so-called Request for Proposal that is seeking 300 PS3s for a "technology assessment." Needless to say, their primary interest is in the console's powerful Cell processor, which they say is the "only brand on the market that utilizes the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost." Exactly what that program entails is unsurprisingly being kept under wraps, with the RFP only going so far to state that the Air Force Research Laboratory is "conducting a technology assessment of certain cell processors." Whatever it is, the Air Force certainly seems to be trying to keep costs as low as possible, with them apparently only interested in the 40GB model.[Via Switched]
Wouldn't sony be immensely non-interested in this, there's no way to recoup the loss on the ps3?
Yeah.. Next time i see that skynet guy.. "I'm gonna punch him in the weaner.." (juno quote)
I hear they're also trying to obtain 300 copies of COD4
I hope the people at Engadget don't really believe this. This is just like the myth about Saddam Hussein wanting to buy hundreds of PS2s. The United States military doesn't need PS3s; they have access to better technology.
The military have been looking at consoles for a number of years now. Back when I was working in the military simulation world, being able to port simulations to a console makes them much more portable rather than lugging around a workstation.
Also, with the younger generation, use of the controllers and general operation of they console system is better than starting up simulation from a PC. Mission fly-throughs to chem/bio training to using a 3D terrain DB for planning purposes are all things that have been looked at being put on consoles.
ppl read this:
The immensely successful Folding@Home project has apparently sparked more scientific endeavors...and this one is complex enough to boggle the mind of anyone who isn't an astrophysicist.
UMass has acquired 16 PlayStation 3 units to comprise their "PS3 Gravity Grid," which will hopefully simulate what happens if two black holes collided. No, we're not making this up. Headed in part by Gaurav Khanna, they have already installed Linux on the PS3s "to more accurately compute the 'ripples' caused by gravitational waves from black holes." Here's a sample of the explanation, and why they decided to go with the PS3 for this project:
"The Sony PlayStation 3 has a number of unique features that make it particularly suited for scientific computation. To start with, the PS3 is an open platform, which essentially means that one can run a different system software on it, for example, PowerPC Linux. Next, it has a revolutionary processor called the Cell processor which was developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba. This processor has a main CPU, called the PPU and several (six for the PS3) special compute engines, called SPUs available for raw computation. Moreover, each SPU performs vector operations, which implies that it can compute on multiple data, in a single step. Finally, its incredibly low cost makes it very attractive as a scientific computing node, that is part of a cluster. In fact, its highly plausible that the raw computing power per dollar that the PS3 offers, is significantly higher than anything else on the market today!"
Air Force is simply analyzing the processing power of the console.
I got this from Roger (American Dad) Area 51. ^^
I knew our government would choose a side, sucks for Microsoft. I hope they saw the movie stealth cause that super smart plane wasn't so nice it killed people, awwww :o( And the secret war continues!