Supercomputer Breaks the $100/GFLOPS Barrier

Hank Dietz writes "At the University of Kentucky, KASY0, a Linux cluster of 128+4 AMD Athlon XP 2600+ nodes, achieved 471 GFLOPS on 32-bit HPL. At a cost of less than $39,500, that makes it the first supercomputer to break $100/GFLOPS. It also is the new record holder for POV-Ray 3.5 render speed. The reason this 'Beowulf' is so cost-effective is a new network architecture that achieves high performance using standard hardware: the asymmetric Sparse Flat Neighborhood Network (SFNN)." Because this was a university project, KASY0 was assembled entirely by unversity students, which while being a source of cheap labor, is also a good way to get a lot of students of involved in a great project.

Comments

Why do you always call it slave labor? Its not.

[HanzoSan]

I think working at mc donalds is slave labor, you cannot pay your rent, you cannot buy your food, you cannot survive, thats slave labor. I dont think this is slave labor, students live better than a person who works at mc donalds. Students do get support from the government via financial aid, they do get scholarships, they get stipends, fellowships, and many many payment systems setup to help them.

Basically their full time job is "student" just like your full time job is whatever it is that you do. They do stuff like this and it pays their bills, they live off scholarships, you live off your paycheck, I'd rather be a student however than work at McDonalds, which is my option if I decide not to go along with the "slave labor camp" .

So you can be a student slave, or a corperate slave, which one do you prefer?