Rasperry Pi supercomputer.

[KarameaDave]

I guess because they could!



http://ostatic.com/blog/meet-the-ras...uter-with-lego

[Gobe1]

That is cool! nuff said

[The Error Guy]

That's awesome! Hahah but what can it "supercompute"?

[Nick G]

Cool! That's a lot of raspberry pi's.

[TideMan]

That's awesome! Hahah but what can it "supercompute"?

It's main use would be for learning to write parallel programs or to parallelise existing programs.

It's not a trivial task because you have to figure out how to divvy up the work between a number of processors so that each of them gets the same amount of work to do. If you don't do this properly, then everybody is sitting around waiting for Processor X to finish. Also, you need to minimise the amount of communication between processors because this takes time that wouldn't accrue if you were using only one processor.

Writing parallel code is a significant intellectual challenge, and typically it needs a machine like NIWA's Cray - a water-cooled monster that cost ~$7 million. The Southampton RPi system makes parallel computing possible for a few hundred $$$, even at home.

[fred_fish]

A pallet of ex-lease desktops and a gigabit switch works too

[The Error Guy]

Lego = Still a big kids toy

[KarameaDave]

A pallet of ex-lease desktops and a gigabit switch works too

Playstation 3s used to be popular too, until good ol' SONY disabled the option to load alternate OS's

[R2x1]

They are doomed. Apple is going to pelt them into oblivion by hurling lawyers for:
a/. Using the name of a fruit for an electrically powered device.
b/. Reversing the 2nd half of the name (from iP), which would obviously be an attempt to steal Apple "look & feel" branding.
c/. Failing completely to price gouge in the manner established by the fashion leader.
d/. Not being Apple.

Users to be merely flogged, but sellers to be bankrupted then boiled in oil to set an example.

Q. How many Apple Supercomputers can fit on the head of a pin? A. All of them.

[KarameaDave]

With room to spare.