I’m wondering… what exactly is a supercomputer now-a-days? How fast does it need to be? My feeling was that all modern laptops would be considered supercomputers by 1960s standards, so somebody please fill me in here.

This is PhysOrg’s post regarding the scientists at the Cluster Workshop, a group funded by the National Science Foundation, Sony, IBM, and some others, that formed a supercomputer out of PlayStation 3′s last year. Now the developers have written a guide on how to build your own, including downloadables and directions on how to run your new supercomputer on Linux.Researchers typically rent the use of supercomputers to simulate experiments, but with these they can build their own for about $4K, saving cash and freeing up time for additional experimentation. Moreover, with guides like these floating around, communities can build their own: imagine every major city running its own sims on agriculture, employment, energy infrastructure, virus transmission…with your own supercomputer, the sky’s the limit.

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