There have been some updates to the University of Southampton Raspberry Pi Supercomputer project, including updated instructions for how to build your own:
Computational Engineers at the University of Southampton have built a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego.
The team, led by Professor Simon Cox, consisted of Richard Boardman, Andy Everett, Steven Johnston, Gereon Kaiping, Neil O’Brien, Mark Scott and Oz Parchment, along with Professor Cox’s son James Cox (aged 6) who provided specialist support on Lego and system testing.
Professor Cox comments: “As soon as we were able to source sufficient Raspberry Pi computers we wanted to see if it was possible to link them together into a supercomputer. We installed and built all of the necessary software on the Pi starting from a standard Debian Wheezy system image and we have published a guide so you can build your own supercomputer.”
The steps to make a Raspberry Pi supercomputer can be downloaded here [30/11/12 update]: Raspberry Pi Supercomputer (PDF).
You can also follow the steps yourself here [30/11/12 update]: Raspberry Pi Supercomputer (html).
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit, be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Have you tried the new “Adafruit Raspberry Pi Educational Linux Distro” ? It’s our tweaked distribution for teaching electronics using the Raspberry Pi. But wait, there’s more! Try our new Raspberry Pi WebIDE! The easiest way to learn programming on a Raspberry Pi.
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It would be great if the boards communicated over USB instead of Ethernet. Then this thing could be built using Model A’s.
Since the Pi’s NIC is USB anyway, it wouldn’t be any slower.