Microwulf: A Personal, Portable(?) Beowulf Cluster - 26Gflops for under USD$1500

September 3, 2007 · 1 min read

Microwulf: A Personal, Portable(?) Beowulf Cluster - 26Gflops for under USD$1500

So for my 500th post...

I noticed an article on Engadget, that pointed me to Slashdot, and then finally I got to the original article by Calvin CS professor Joel Adams and senior Tim Brom.

So powered by AMD, running Ubuntu and hooked in to a Cluster Monkey cluster these chaps have really managed to raise (or lower? depending on which way you look at it?) the bar for price/performance. While claiming to break below the USD$100/Gflop price point they also point out that as of the 1st of August 2007 this can be achieved for $1256, Congratulations!

As detailed in the article on ClusterMonkey.net this predates the release of Quad core CPU's AND more importantly it was done earlier this year in the face of higher prices for memory while they were still trying to stick to a budget of USD$2,500. It would be very interesting to see what it would be capable of if it was using Quad core's + more RAM?

Microwulf is a personal, portable Beowulf cluster, providing over 26 Gflops of measured performance, for less than $2500. Its dimensions are just 11" x 12" x 17", making it small enough to fit on one's desktop or in a suitcase.

!   Microwulf was designed and built by Calvin CS professor Joel Adams and senior Tim Brom.

For more details, click one of the links below:

Update: As of Aug 1, 2007, Microwulf can be built for $1256, improving its price/performance ratio to less than $48/Gflop. See the Cluster Monkey article above for the details.

More at Microwulf: Breaking the $100/GFLOP Barrier - Discount Supercomputing At Its Best

This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: Dave Caddick

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