How To Build a Supercomputer In 24 Hours

An anonymous reader writes with a link to this "time lapse video of students and postdocs at the University of Zurich constructing the zBox4 supercomputer. The machine has a theoretical compute capacity of ~1% of the human brain and will be used for simulating the formation of stars, planets and galaxies." That rack has "3,072 2.2GHz Intel Xeon cores and over 12TB of RAM." Also notable: for once, several of the YouTube comments are worth reading for more details on the construction and specs.

Comments

But what about all the Garbage?

[Grumpinuts]

Used to do this kind of stuff when I was with IBM about 10 years ago, we had a group in XSeries Manufacturing who specialised in quick turnaround configuration of HPC rack systems just like this. Funnily enough, one of the major logistical elements was dunnage, ie the empty cardboard/foam and plastic that all the option parts arrive in. When running full out we used to have 1-2 guys per shift just to move the rubbish out to the big compactors out back. You wouldn't believe just how much packaging even a comparatively small cluster like that can generate.