Build a Supercomputer for less than £2500

[Vulpes Abnocto]

You read that right. Computational engineers at the University of Southampton acquired 64 Raspberry Pi boards, mounted them within a lego "rack", outfitted each Pi with a 16 GB SD card (bringing the total memory space to 1TB) and ran a 13 amp power connection to it to create the "Iridis-Pi”, a supercomputer costing less than £2500 ($3,231 USD).

Source

Instructions on How to Build Your Own Iridis-Pi (PDF)

 

[Sicklyboy]

I'm gonna buy me one of those little things soon.

 

[JsdMaNintendo]

Looks hilarious and so impractical. I honestly don't know what I'm looking at. I see Legos and wires. But the details kinda blow my mind o_o

 

[Flame]

the real question is can it play crysis 2?

 

[raulpica]

I wanted to buy a Raspberry Pi, then noticed how it's seriously underpowered for almost anything these days except running stuff on terminal.

 

[Krestent]

Or what if I just clustered 20 of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOADED-Internet-Ready-Dell-Optiplex-GX260-Windows-XP-Pro-Desktop-Computer-PC-/330792422766?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item4d04c3cd6e

 

[raulpica]

Or what if I just clustered 20 of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LOADED-Internet-Ready-Dell-Optiplex-GX260-Windows-XP-Pro-Desktop-Computer-PC-/330792422766?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item4d04c3cd6e

Uber-cheap! If you got 64 of these it'd be a lot better than the Iridis-Pi

 

[The Catboy]

I wish there was a video of it working

 

[Jamstruth]

Its underpowered but its a £25 computer designed entirely to promote coding in school age children (hence the use of Scratch).

 

[The Catboy]

the real question is can it play crysis 2?

Actually the better question would be; will it blend?

 

[Veho]

I wish there was a video of it working

There's really nothing to see. It just sits there.

 

[Rydian]

Not even getting any performance numbers in the article?

Not a good sign for a £2500 investment.

 

[raulpica]

Not even getting any performance numbers in the article?

Not a good sign for a £2500 investment.

JUST THINK OF THE COOLNESS FACTOR, MAN

 

[Rydian]

This... can get me laid?

 

[Gahars]

They were able to make a supercomputer with... legos?

I'm clearly doing something wrong with my life.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I have 1 Raspberry Pi sitting at home, looks like it's just 63 more to go.

 

[Vulpes Abnocto]

Since I have no idea how to operate a superbrick computer, I'm going to salvage the mainboards out of a bunch of old cell phones, make lego frames for them, and just tell people it's an Iridium-Pi.

 

[Jamstruth]

Not even getting any performance numbers in the article?

Not a good sign for a £2500 investment.

Seems like this has spread before its ready really. They've got it working basically but they're still working on the kernel for all the parallel processing and such they need to get it working properly if I read the article correctly. They haven't done any kind of benchmarking yet.

 

[Pleng]

What's it actually supposed to do?

 

[Quietlyawesome94]

Got a single Rasberry Pi sitting around, waiting until I can purchase a case before I mess around with it too much. I did run a few 1080p MKVs and it ran them like a champ.