We’ve seen DIY supercomputers before: take a few motherboards, give them all the same processor, give them all the same amount of RAM and couple them all together via LAN. It has been a cheap and effective way for educational institutions (and enthusiasts) to jump into supercomputing. The Iridus-Pi continues in the same vein, using a cluster of 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego.

University of Southampton Professor Simon Cox has done an outstanding job here, but I definitely think that the next step needs to be doing something to address the power supply issue. The Raspberry Pi runs off 5v micro-USB and can run off 4 x AA batteries, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out a system that significantly cuts down on the amount of adapters and power strips involved.

[Simon Cox via Make]