At the University of Kentucky, KASY0, a Linux cluster of 128+4 AMD
Athlon XP 2600+ nodes, achieved 471 GFLOPS on 32-bit HPL. At a cost of
less than $39,500, that makes it the first supercomputer to break
$100/GFLOPS. It also is the new record holder for POV-Ray 3.5 render
speed. The reason this 'Beowulf' is so cost-effective is a new network
architecture that achieves high performance using standard hardware:
the asymmetric Sparse Flat Neighborhood Network (SFNN)." Because this
was a university project, KASY0 was assembled entirely by unversity
students, which while being a source of cheap labor, is also a good way
to get a lot of students of involved in a great project.
Recent 
At the University of Kentucky, KASY0, a Linux cluster of 128+4 AMD
Athlon XP 2600+ nodes, achieved 471 GFLOPS on 32-bit HPL. At a cost of
less than $39,500, that makes it the first supercomputer to break
$100/GFLOPS. It also is the new record holder for POV-Ray 3.5 render
speed. The reason this 'Beowulf' is so cost-effective is a new network
architecture that achieves high performance using standard hardware:
the asymmetric Sparse Flat Neighborhood Network (SFNN)." Because this
was a university project, KASY0 was assembled entirely by unversity
students, which while being a source of cheap labor, is also a good way
to get a lot of students of involved in a great project.
News source: