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From physorg.com:

Using eight Sony Playstation 3 units, Dr. Frank Mueller built a supercomputing cluster capable of high-performance computing and running the latest in computer gaming.

Mueller, an associate professor of computer science, has built a supercomputing cluster capable of both high-performance computing and running the latest in computer gaming. His cluster of eight PS3 machines - the first such academic cluster in the world - packs the power of a small supercomputer, but at a total cost of about $5,000, it costs less than some desktop computers that have only a fraction of the computing power.

"In the computing world there is a list of the top 500 fastest computers," Mueller says. Currently the fastest is BlueGene/L, a supercomputer with more than 130,000 processors at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The PS3 cluster at NC State does not break into the top 500, but Mueller estimates that with approximately 10,000 PS3 machines anyone could create the fastest computer in the world - albeit with limited single-precision capabilities and networking constraints.

Full Story: physorg.com