A distributed computer built from 68 PCs has been found to be one of the 500
fastest computers in the world. The Avalon computer at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory cost just $150 000 to build and can handle more than 20
billion operations per second. It came 315th out of 500 more expensive machines
at the Supercomputer 98 conference in Mannheim, Germany. The key to its success
is a rugged parallel operating system called Linux, say the researchers.
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