DIY supercomputer points 'the way forward'

Techies at Los Alamos National Laboratories have built their own supercomputer for the knock-down price of $150,000. Analysts believe the hobbyists dream could become a commercial reality.

The computer was made using components available off-the-shelf. The result is a machine with a top computing speed of 10 billion operations per second. The computer, known as Avalon, was ranked as the 315th fastest computer in the world at the Supercomputer '98 conference held in Mannheim, Germany earlier this year.

Martin Hingley, research director at IDC, said that this approach "could be the way forward for an industry that has been in the doldrums". Millions of dollars previously spent on the supercomputer market are now being spent on PC server technology. However, Avalon-like machines which can be built and linked up overnight might attract users back to the supercomputer, Hingley said.

The Avalon was created from 68 high-end workstations that use Digital's Alpha microprocessors. It was connected together by 3Com network switches. Each processor in the Avalon is the equivalent to a single PC, using the same type of memory and disk drive.

According to the Los Alamos Labs the computer has not suffered a single hardware failure or operating system crash on any of the processors in the first six weeks of its life.