14 DAY TRIAL // Without a doubt, Sony's PS3 is one of the most powerful gaming machines ever released, but it seems that its raw computing power can be put to other uses (beside that of letting gamers play the latest titles), since the US Airforce has just built a supercomputer featuring no less than 1,760 PS3s, that delivers a very good level of power for a fraction of the price a “standard” device of this type would be able to deliver.
According to TechEye, the supercomputer, called the Condor, has been developed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in New York State and it provides quite an OK level of computing power, ranking roughly on the 34'th spot in a top of the world's most powerful machines of this type.
However, more importantly, the cost of assembling it (out of the aforementioned 1,760 PS3s) was rated at around 2 million US dollars, which might seem like a rather high price at first, but it's actually 10 to 20 times cheaper than a normal data-crunching machine of this type (typically, built using much more expensive hardware components).
Of course, the reason why the networked PS3s make such a good job at data crunching is the built-in Cell BE chip, a wonder of technology that, unfortunately, has proved to be of little success outside the PS3 or intercontinental missiles (another field where the Cell has been used).
Moreover, beside of the lower assembly costs, it seems that the Condor also requires a lower amount of power in order to work, thus making this sort of “DIY supercomputer” pretty eco-friendly as well.
Apparently, the main purpose of this extremely powerful machine will be to handle such applications as artificial intelligence research, pattern recognition detection and the analysis of heavy quantities of images from surveillance systems.