World’s first ever supercomputer built from Raspberry Pi computers and Lego

Computer engineers at the University of Southampton have built a super computer using 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego. The the computer called “Iridis-Pi” runs of single 13a mains socket and uses Message Passing Interface to communicate between nodes and Ethernet.

Professor Simon Cox along with his 6-year-old son James built the Raspberry Pie using racking and stacking Lego Blocks. The most interesting part is that the entire research team has made efforts to make a step-by-step guide for anyone interested in creating their own Raspberry Pi high performance computer.

“As soon as we were able to source sufficient Raspberry Pie Computers, we wanted to see if it was possible for them to link together into a supercomputer. We installed and built all the necessary software on the Pi starting from a standard Derbian Wheezy System”, said Professor Simon Cox.

The entire system costs approximately £2,500 (excluding switches), has an impressive memory of 1 TB and has 16GB card slots for each Rasbperry Pi.

With initial results turning out to be great, father and son are hoping that the venture turns out to be a commercial success.

6-year-old James Cox said that the Raspberry Pie is great fun and found it amazing to write computer programs and play games in it.

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