First Look: The Condor Cluster Built From Nearly 2,000 PlayStation 3s

An awesome new supercomputer, called The Condor Cluster, has just been unveiled at The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)!  The gigantic system is constructed of nearly 2,000 PlayStation 3s.

The Condor Cluster is capable of 500 TFLOPS per second, and includes 1,760 PS3s, 168 separate graphical processing units, and 84 coordinating servers. AFRL engineers had to get the PS3's directly from Sony because the new slim models don't support Linux.

This is not a publicity by the AFRL or Sony. The system cost of $2 million is estimated at only 5-10% of the cost of an equally powerful system built from separate components. The supercomputer is also friendly for the environment, it only consumes 10% of the energy required by comparable supercomputers. 

Today was the ribon-cutton event at Wright-Paterson Air Force Base in Rome, NY. Once operational, The Condor Clusters will be used for processing satellite imagery, along with research into fields like artificial intelligence, radar enhancement, and pattern recognition.

I don't personally grasp what the system is truly capable of because I am not an engineer, but this sounds fricking awesome!  I have heard of other organizations using PS3s in this manner.