If research is your thing, then PS3 is where it’s at! Dr. Gaurav Khanna is employing a cluster of eight PS3s to help measure theoretical gravity waves, running highly optimized Linux code on them for results.

“The interest in the PS3 really was for two main reasons,” said Khanna, who is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth who specializes in computational astrophysics. “One of those is that Sony did this remarkable thing of making the PS3 an open platform, so you can in fact run Linux on it and it doesn’t control what you do.”

According to the report, Khanna previously relied on various supercomputing sites spread across the US, each time costing up to $5000. But now he can pair up eight PS3s ($3200), which offer him performance of up to “200 of the supercomputing nodes”; and it can also be used indefinitely. “Basically, it’s almost like a replacement,” he says. “I don’t have to use that supercomputer anymore, which is a good thing.”

PS3 – a researcher’s wet dream. Now, where are the games, dammit?