A few years ago I came upon an article that outlined the use of the PS3 by the United States Government as a compliment to their super computing environment (one of several),
http://blogs.federaltimes.com/federal-times-blog/2009/12/09/at-pentagon-the-ps3-only-does-everything/I am always impressed with the ingenuity of the IT folks to come up with these concepts and actually put them into production reality.