I Bought a Piece of a PS3 Supercomputer - US Air Force Condor Cluster PS3 Pickup!

In 2010 the United States Air Force Research Laboratory built the Condor Cluster, a supercomputer utilizing the power of 1,760 PlayStation 3 consoles clustered through Linux installed via Other OS. The purpose of this cluster was to be used "for tasks such as radar enhancement, pattern recognition, satellite imagery processing, and artificial intelligence research" according to an article cited further down in the description from Phys.org. The reason for choosing to use PS3 consoles to build a supercomputer cluster was due to cost saving measures, each PS3 cost $400 at the time as opposed to the estimated $10,000 per unit of another comparable piece of hardware.

Years later as this cluster was spun down, the PS3 consoles were taken out of inventory, separated from their hard drives, and sold at government surplus sales. The two consoles shown in this video were listed for sale on eBay and were roughly described as consoles coming from the Air Force which had previously run Linux. A little bit of research showed these were indeed a part of the Condor Cluster! Here's to taking a look at a really neat piece of PS3 history, as well as attempting to bust an ongoing myth in the PS3 community over these consoles being updated past 3.20 firmware.

#PS3 #CondorCluster #ProjectCondor

This video has been made with Fair Use in mind and has been created as an educational piece of media.

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Credits and Sources Cited!

US Air Force connects 1,760 PlayStation 3's to build supercomputer:
https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html

New PS3 "Condor" Supercomputer Now Fully Online:
https://hothardware.com/news/new-ps3-condor-supercomputer-now-fully-online

Air Force may suffer collateral damage from PS3 firmware update:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/05/how-removing-ps3-linux-hurts-the-air-force/

Thank You to Joonie for Sharing the eBay Listing:
https://twitter.com/Joonie86

Thank You to Woody for Further Image Sleuthing:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8mNRc8UWvTrLGW-5mIRwIg

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