When PS3 boasted about their cell processor, people were amazed at the capabilities. Each PS3 feeding off each other in symbiotic harmony…sounded futuristic. When people started tooling the PS3’s to guide missiles…people were also impressed. But it seemed like the execution of said design wasn’t as perfect as it seemed.

But the idea was there. You could essentially bind all the computers into a large network and have it do amazing things. This is what some physicists did over at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and boy, did this work.

This guy…smart he is.

Sciencealert.com reports that Guarav Khanna a black hole physicist has used the PS3’s to build a rather cheap supercomputer. He’s been using the PS3’s to process numbers involving two black holes colliding.

Apparently, the cost to build a supercomputer was too high and the PS3’s “cheap” $250 price point makes it really cheap to build a processor out of scratch. While Sony donated 4 at the outset, Khanna bought another 12. This sped up calculations to a factor of 10x that of a normal computer.

Now if that kind of setup can pull a Superman 3…