The Blu-ray function is disabled, so no, you won't find Defense Department engineers on the job watching "Avatar" in high def while running classified satellite images through their new supercomputer that harnesses banks of Sony PlayStation video gaming consoles.
Also, the Defense engineers didn't go to Toys R Us or Sears to buy those 1,760 PlayStations. They worked directly with Sony and one of its distributors.
"It wasn't something as simple as going to Best Buy or Wal-Mart," said Mark Barnell, the high-performance computing director at the Air Force Research Lab's operation in Rome, N.Y.
Barnell answered these as well as more technical questions this morning in a phone interview with The Plain Dealer, which in today's editions described how Defense Department engineers and scientists developed the biggest, fastest interactive computer the Pentagon has.
The supercomputer, nicknamed the Condor Cluster, will allow very fast analysis of large high-resolution imagery -- billions of pixels a minute, taking what used to take several hours down to mere seconds, Barnell said.
Its sophisticated algorithms also will allow scientists to better identify objects flying in space, where movement and distance create blurring, with higher-quality images than possible before.
Its capacity makes the PlayStation 3 cluster about the 33rd largest computer in the world, Barnell said. "It's in that magnitude. "
But what makes it especially useful for Defense work is the fact that it is highly interactive, allowing users to do what they want when they want to. Though the Condor will be housed in upstate New York at a center that is part of the Dayton, Ohio-based Air Force Research Laboratory network, other service branches and centers can access it.
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