Low-Cost Supercomputer Made With 1,100 PC’s
[T]he fastest cluster machine, the Lawrence Livermore system consisting of 2304 Intel Xeon processors, is capable of 7.63 trillion operations a second, at a price estimated at $10 million to $15 million. The Virginia Tech computer makes the cost-to-performance equation even starker.
The official results for the ranking will not be reported until next month at a supercomputer industry event. But the Apple-based supercomputer, which is powered by 2,200 I.B.M. microprocessors, was able to compute at 7.41 trillion operations a second, a speed surpassed by only three other ultra-fast computers.
A third the cost, for near-enough equivalent performance benchmarks and numbers of CPUs: and this is something you can take home with you. I’m guessing the Intel-based supercomputers aren’t made of clustered off-the-shelf units.