In the current issue of Scientific American magazine, William W. Hargrove, Forrest M. Hoffman, and Thomas Sterling describe a project in which they built a “Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer”, based on a Linux based Beowulf cluster of many cheap PCs. They write . . .

” . . . To create a high-resolution map of the continental U.S., we divided the country into 7.8 million square cells, each with an area of one square kilometer. For each cell we had to consider as many as 25 variables, ranging from average monthly precipitation to the nitrogen content of the soil. A single PC or workstation could not accomplish the task. We needed a parallel-processing supercomputer — and one that we could afford!”

“Our solution was to construct a computing cluster using obsolete PCs that ORNL would have otherwise discarded. Dubbed the Stone SouperComputer because it was built essentially at no cost, our cluster of PCs was powerful enough to produce ecoregion maps of unprecedented detail. Other research groups have devised even more capable clusters that rival the performance of the world's best supercomputers at a mere fraction of their cost. This advantageous price-to-performance ratio has already attracted the attention of some corporations, which plan to use the clusters for such complex tasks as deciphering the human genome. I n fact, the cluster concept promises to revolutionize the computing field by offering tremendous processing power to any research group, school or business that wants it.”

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