March 9,
2008: The U.S. Air Force is buying 300 PlayStation 3 game consoles. Not to play
games, but because it's the cheapest way to get the powerful processors that
create the photorealistic graphics for PlayStation games. Air force researchers
want to use these processors (similar to the ones found in high end video cards)
to build faster computers for military use. The CPU manufacturer was not
willing to sell the PlayStation processor separately, at least for a reasonable
price. So it was easier to just buy PlayStation 3s.
This use
of video game electronics, for other purposes, is nothing new. Military
researchers began doing this sort of thing in the late 1990s with graphic
processors. This led to the introduction last year of modified graphic cards,
which produce supercomputer type results, but at a very low cost. These were
basically Nvidia 8800 graphic cards tweaked to just crunch numbers (one card
equals half a teraflop of computing power). Each of these PCI cards costs about
$1,500. For under $20,000 you have yourself a four teraflop supercomputer, and
it looks like just another PC. By building this kind of computing power into
weapons systems (like sonars and radars), you can improve their performance
(speed and accuracy) enormously. This kind of computing power also makes UAVs
and other robotic systems much smarter, even when they are under the control of
a human operator.
