My IKEA experiences have been pretty hit or miss, but maybe that’s just because I wasn’t building Linux rendering clusters out of the POÄNG chairs. Because one modder took a US$40 IKEA Helmer set of drawers and shoved in 6 Intel Quad Core processors. His end product featured 24 2.4 Ghz cores and 48GB of RAM. Where an example render on his DualCore Xenon 2.66 Ghz with 4 GB ram took 552 minutes (9.2 h), the IKEA machine breezed through the same task in just 64 minutes. Just don’t try to pick up your Helmer case on a weekend. You could seriously die. [Helmer via MAKE]
Tim Molter
October 6, 2008 at 4:05 PM
A friend and I built another version of a 24-core Linux cluster built into a $29.99 Ikea Helmer cabinet. The total cost is $2550.11. The design and implementation is robust and elegant. On my blog, I show how to build it in pictures, breakdown the component costs, talk about air flow, and discuss idle and full speed temperatures. We think our solution is practical and feasible for other people needing a small cluster for specialty applications.
http://obscuredclarity.blogspot.com/2008/09/24-core-linux-cluster-in-2999-case-from.html
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