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Student and Professor Build Budget Supercomputer
Luke writes "This past winter Calvin College professor Joel Adams and then Calvin senior Tim Brom built Microwulf, a portable supercomputer with 26.25 gigaflops peak performance, that cost less than $2,500 to construct, becoming the most cost-efficient supercomputer anywhere that Adams knows of. "It's small enough to check on an airplane or fit next to a desk," said Brom. Instead of a bunch of researchers having to share a single Beowulf cluster supercomputer, now each researcher can have their own."
A beowulf cluster full of these!
(Okay, now back to responsible mature posting)
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
It looks rather fragile, quite like the iRack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcjLEwZqcQI), and I dont think it would survive checking in on an airplane given how some suitcases looks like at baggage claim.
Cool achievement nevertheless.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Now Microsoft have their next development target for Office.
Deleted
Lisa, I'd like to buy your cat!
I hate printers.
is it powerful enough to run Windows Vista?
Minesweeper under Vista - No
-- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
Sure. But then your cat would have to moonlight as a mouser, run errands for the neighborhood dogs, and -- worst of all -- give up catnip; all in order to pay for the project.
I would not want to live in the same house as a sleep deprived cat going through catnip withdrawl.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
Doubt it. You think you can hook up gigabit ethernet without at least five cats eh?
They just linked 4 motherboards together. My cat could do that.
Would your cat be alive at the end of the process? We wouldn't be sure till we opened the case.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Discovering that you can build an even more cost effective supercomputer than these guys: priceless
which is totally what she said
Only true if your user ID contains 7 digits...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
A striking resemblance for a box of bits. I wonder if it's got the same surly attitude.
They probably padded the budget and spent the remaining money on hookers and blow. That would explain how they got delusions of grandeur and thought they built something new and innovative when all they did was link 4 motherboards via cheap gig-ethernet.
This story is literally a 'nothing to see here, move along' one.
The cluster depends on gigE for the interconnect, which means data transfers are going to be slow, and have a high latency. He'd be better off spending a little more and using Infiniband equipment.
Clear, Dark Skies
It might just about be powerful enough to run Vista though....
Beowulf is a good idea for a very limited number of number crunching applications, or as a student learning tool for comp sci or related studies. Yeah, we built one of those a couple years ago, the professors ended picking up intel quad core machines that were faster (no effing network latency). Beowulf is gathering dust.
Oh, and try writing your own lam-mpi code sometime...
Aren't these things like chick magnets?
256 MB XDR @3.2 GHz for system memory and 256 MB GDDR3 @700 MHz for video memory. Not to bring on a console war extravaganza, but the M$ xbox 360 has the same amount of total memory, but instead theirs is 512 MB UMA (Shared with CPU)...
Anyway, memory could very well be a limitation with a cluster of ps3s vs. the microwulf cluster, but it all would depend on the operations your performing. I'd venture to guess the 256mb of system memory would be enough for anyone. :)
Sounds like somebody is bitter about getting an English degree instead of an Engineering degree...
Don't worry, they're Supermicro, they wouldn't be stable if you cooled them in a swimming pool of liquid nitrogen.
/.er has in their closet - just imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
Still, meh indeed, scrape together the piles of computers your average
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"