US Air Force seeks 300 PS3s
- Posted March 4th, 2008 at 20:09 EDT by Eric Blattberg
- 6,880 views
- 40 Comments
Looks like gamers aren't the only ones that can make use of PlayStation 3s, as the US Air Force wants them too - 300 to be exact.
The Air Force is seeking 300 Sony 40 GB PlayStation 3 Game Consoles for their powerful cell processors.
"The Air Force Research Laboratory is conducting a technology assessment of certain cell processors. The processors in the Sony PlayStation 3 are the only brand on the market that utilizes the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost."
Could the next generation of fighter jets be powered by the cell? Probably not, but if you happen to have 300 PS3s lying around, give the US Air Force a call, and make sure to tell them we sent you (come on free airplane!).
Source
Comments
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Trojans24601 |
trojans24601- 8:10pm GMT - March 4th, 2008
- 1
sounds like the AirForce will have a little more free time than before
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PerezStation3 |
HYper_MAN456- 8:12pm GMT - March 4th, 2008
- 2
awsome! You'll never hear the AIr Force use Xbox 360s!
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mattman2200 |
mattman22- 8:20pm GMT - March 4th, 2008
- 4
this is just another example of how powerful the PS3 truly is. The 360 simply cannot handle something such as folding@home and probably wouldn't be able to handle whatever the Air Force is planning to use the PS3 for. And now the fact that MGS4 doesn't even fit on a 50gb blu-ray pretty much solidifies the game as ps3 exclusive because there is no way it would fit on a 360 dvd....
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blacksharinganx
- 8:27pm GMT - March 4th, 2008
- 5
look like they getting bored of war already LOL or they r using the ps3 4 training simulation like in MGS
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Sniperwithacause |
Sniperwithacause- 9:41pm GMT - March 4th, 2008
- 10
Now this really could be some good news. Big Brother is always watching u now.
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Xandure |
Xandure- 11:24pm GMT - March 4th, 2008
- 14
Some interesting points listed above, but i'm concerned about big brother watching over us. But if they truely are using it for combat simulation, that just goes to show the power of the cell pushing high definition photo-realistic games to the limit, so how about more blood. (I mean enough so it actually rolls down the side of the wall and not just some other splatter, just a suggestion.)
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xeniczone
- 12:06am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 16
Well the Xbox has dedicated chips in it that allow it to uncompress stuff in almost real time. Which gives it an advantage as to allow it to store more then 9 gigs on to a disk that is cheaper to make then Blu-ray. But at the same time there is no way you can compress 50gigs onto a 9 gig disk and still expect it to uncompress fast.
2007 was just a slow year for the Playstation 3. Now that it's getting all the good games and attention from the Air Force it should be a good year for it. Of course the air force isn't going to use it as a Playstation they are just going to put linux on it and use it at a computer but w/e it's still a Playstation 3. -
D3v1lwqer23
- 12:14am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 17
yeah, this is probably gonna go to the troops downrange, studying the cell over 300 PS3's seems unlikely, seeing as the tech for the USAF is months ahead of any law abiding citizen.
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Super_Dante |
DanteSuper- 1:23am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 20
i'm sure its for its blu-ray player not for the cell processors !
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trionghost |
trionghost- 1:33am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 21
Well, 300x215GFLOPS=64.5TFLOPS and 300x$400=$120000 has anyone knows another supercomputer with 64.5TFLOPS for $120k? Good deal!
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InfernoReaper |
GrimDarkling- 1:33am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 22
From parking cars to fighter jets? Sony might not win in sales, but they sure as he!! will with ideas like these.
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evilmonkey501 |
evilmonkey501- 1:49am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 23
actually, the usaf wants these ps3's because of WHAT they can do. read this article and you can see why 300 ps3's could be important: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140064/article.html
its all about the cell processor.
oh. and hyperslug is an oxymoron.
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Farseye |
Farseye- 1:51am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 24
lol, its like an xbox 360 reporter goes up to a USAF dude and is like "can you please tell us why your using the ps3 instead of the 360?" and the dude will be like "well, #1 - the processing chip in the 360 sucks, #2 - its lame, #3 - were not going to buy a quadzillon double A batteries for those freakin controllers, let alone 60 bucks for three hundred 360s for crappy internet service and no browser, #4 oh, and did i say it was lame???"...... lmao!!! i can see it now
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killercop |
killercop- 2:33am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 27
Nice. That alittle showoff for Sony and more sales. :D
A shame that US Air Force is useless. You might have the most feared planes and most of them, but how the he|| can they be useful if all of them are on drill battling a fake Russian invasion?
;)
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chimmy
- 3:36am GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 29
This doesn't sound right... Console processors are heavily stripped down versions of their PC counterparts (hence a PS3 is cheaper than some PC processors), and the forces have access to the latest Cray PCs. The US forces always have quirky recruitment campaigns, I suspect this just is a ploy to recruit 300 people..join us ..get a free PS3, type thing. Smacks of that story of the Iraq army trying to map out the world in detail using 20 PS2s... yeah right....
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Deldwen |
Deldwen1- 3:45pm GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 38
Cell is helping the world?!? O_O
thats soo awesome. and its crazy. Playstation 3 helped secure are safty! lol sooo those xbox fanboys cant say its cuz they are patriotic that they only get 360's! lol. Sonys doin more to help america.. then america's doing to help america (micro)
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Untildeath89 |
willmakenewonesoon- 6:24pm GMT - March 5th, 2008
- 39
i dont get it, why dont IBM just offer cells? i mean for programing and stuff, ps3 waste about 3 on linux and xmb so its much weaker then cells full power for calculations. anyways it kinda sucks i taught they were going for "cell of the future" thing thats why they held that cell programing convention thing i think.
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PS3-The Ultimate Machine
- 1:03pm GMT - March 6th, 2008
- 40
All i gotta say is WTF?!?!??!!!!!!!The US Air Force,will surely have a lot more entertainment now.@ ^^^^
Well,last i heard,was that IBM is still in the development stage of PROPER Cell Processors,remember the one in the ps3 is a verrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyy stripped down version,with just the guts.IBM has plans to make new super computers,regular chips,and all sorts of crazy stuff using the Cell architecture,but as i said b4 they're still in the developing stage,so don't expect your pc to be powered by Cell any time soon.

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