News: A Lego Supercomputer!

Due to work deadlines I have been unable to build any brick toy kits lately.  But in between making Android apps and writing courseware I stumbled upon this article from tomshardware.com:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Raspberry-Pi-Supercomputer-Legos-Linux,17596.html


It's a Do-It-Yourself supercomputer composed of multiple Raspberry Pis and a Lego framework.

Simply awesome!

What is a PI?

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

- from: http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

This is the raspberry pi.  Notice the SD card beside it.

A quick overview of the Pi's major parts.

The Supercomputer:

The modular lego frame system

The team lead by Professor Simon Cox was able to build their supercomputer for the cost of around $4,000 US.  It combines 64 Raspberry Pi devices, 64 16GB SD cards and a modular framework made of Legos.

For those who want to make their own they can go on over to the University of Southampton's page: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~sjc/raspberrypi/

Pictures from engadget.com  and http://www.raspberrypi.org