Calling this a "supercomputer" is a misnomer (though it's a sexy one), because it makes people expect real high performance. As many have pointed out, a single

Calling this a "supercomputer" is a misnomer (though it's a sexy one), because it makes people expect real high performance. As many have pointed out, a single GPU could beat this thing easily in terms of performance. It's really a dev platform for shared-memory parallel computing, mimicking some types of supercomputer architectures... which isn't to say it's not awesome. I've seen similar projects in the distributed-memory space (tiny clusters like Limulus[1], MicroWulf[2], or LittleFe[3]). These things are great for educational purposes, and the low cost makes them a lot of fun for classes and workshops. LittleFe, for example, supports distributed-memory and GPGPU programming and teaches you about clusters, and the educational program at the Supercomputing conference lets some educators build one and take it home for free. But for professional work, I think a workstation-class PC, maybe with a GPU, is always going to win out. [1] http://limulus.basement-supercomputing.com/ http://limulus.basement-supercomputing.com/ [2] http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/ http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/ [3] http://littlefe.net/ http://littlefe.net/