In 2010, the United States Air Force created the world's 33rd-fastest computer inside its own Air Force Research Laboratory, using 1,760 Sony PlayStation 3 consoles.
They called it the "Condor Cluster," and it was the Department of Defense's fastest computer.
The USAF put the computer in Rome, New York, near Syracuse, and intended to use the computer for radar enhancement, pattern recognition, satellite imagery processing and artificial intelligence research for current and future Air Force projects and operations.
Because a PlayStation cost $300 at the time, together, the PlayStations formed the core of the computer for a cost of roughly $1 million, 10% of the price of a conventional supercomputer.
The result was a 500 TeraFLOPS Heterogeneous Cluster powered by PS3s but connected to subcluster heads of dual-quad Xeons with multiple GPGPUs (general-purpose graphics processing units). The video-game consoles consumed 90% less energy than any alternative.
Courtney Dauwalter set the Western States 100 course record of 15:29:34 three weeks ago.
Today, she set a course record at the Hardrock 100 in 26:14:08, for a combined time of 41:43:42.
This resets the overall record for this double of 42:12:43 (Jeff Browning, 2016). #HR100