Cheap Supercomputing

Professor Joel Adams and former student Tim Brom have built a high-performance computer that sits on a desktop and cost only $2,470 to construct. It now could be built for just $1,255.

as Micorbeowulf, it performs at 26.25 gigaflops and measures just 11 x 12 x 17 inches and it does offer the best price-performance ratio—$47.80 per Gflops based on current construction costs. Compare this to Stanford University’s Bio-X supercomputer cluster, for which the price-performance ratio is $109 per Gflops, considered very efficient.





Two technology improvements made the project possible: multicore CPUs and Gigabit Ethernet. Microwulf has four dual-core chips, which communicate via Gigabit Ethernet. Adams has ported 12 applications and his students have written two demonstration programs to show Microwulf’s capabilities.

The construction of the Microwulf makes high performance computing within the reach of small companies. This means that data mining, certain classes of AI applications, and business intelligence application are within reach of small (smaller that 200 staff) organizations.

There are more technical details @ http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/