Students build supercomputers from bits, pieces

spudnic writes: "The LSU Center for Computation and Technology and Chief Scientist Thomas Sterling developed the free summer boot camp as a pilot program to expand statewide as early as next year. "They literally assembled these themselves and loaded the software," said Sterling, pointing to the computer monitors and the stacks of computing nodes on top each other. "They built these from bits and pieces, so it's really hands-on experience." "I can't live in an ivory tower and assume we'll be delivered a steady stream of students," said Sterling, who is best known for creating the Beowulf supercomputing cluster — a group of usually identical computers working together — while at NASA."