Video: How to Build a Cheap Supercomputer

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pi2modelbIn this video, Rasim Muratovic shows you how to to build a cheap super computer using Raspberry Pi devices.

When you think about building your own rig, you probably think of setting up a crazy ass gaming computer or creating a computer on a budget to get the best possible components for the least amount of money. You’re almost certainly not considering putting together a supercomputer. Maybe you should. making a cluster large enough to be classed as a super computer using Raspberry Pi’s (RPi) can be done for less than $1,000. Raspberry Pi is a single-board Linux-powered computer. They’re powered by 700MHz ARM11-processors and include a Videocore IV GPU. The Model B+ comes with 512MBs of RAM, four USB ports and a 10/100 BaseT Ethernet port. The processors can be overclocked to 1GHz.

See Part 2 on How to Load Software and Part 3 on the final build out.

In related news, the $35 Raspberry Pi 2 is out with a faster processor and twice the memory. Here are the specs:

  • SoC : Broadcom BCM2836 (CPU, GPU, DSP, SDRAM, and single USB port)
  • CPU: 900 MHz quad-core ARM Cortex A7 (ARMv7 instruction set)
  • GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV @ 250 MHz, OpenGL ES 2.0 (24 GFLOPS), 1080p30 MPEG-2 and VC-1 decoder (with license), 1080p30 h.264/MPEG-4 AVC high-profile decoder and encoder
  • Memory: 1 GB (shared with GPU)
  • Total backwards compatibility (in terms of multimedia, form-factor and interfacing) with Pi 1

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