Philip Emeagwali uses 65,000 processors to

perform the world's fastest computation of 3.1

billion (3,100,000,000) calculations per second.

The significance was that his accomplishment proved that computers designed with thousands of inexpensive processors, similar to those used in personal computers, are faster and cheaper

than supercomputers that cost $120 million. This technology, called massively parallel computing, is used to make busy Internet sites work faster.