castanyes blaves

I have recently experienced how Linux and Open Source is ubiquitously present in such incredible places. Yesterday we went to visit BSC's Mare Nostrum, a supercomputer set up by UPC, Generalitat de Catalunya, and the Spanish government jointly with IBM. It runs on Linux, as most of the servers one can nowadays buy from IBM.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avilella/14527185/

It is formed of some ~4000 blades, each one being a more or less complete computer in which Linux is "netsufflated" and makesone piece of a big parallelization machine, connected by 2GBps bandwitdh with the other blades.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avilella/14527186/

It is a pretty amazing place: the computer is inside a chapel, which was desacralized beforehand. The chorus of the chapel will be used to held presentations to visitors.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/avilella/14527187/

Also, I recently read about the the MIT project to bring the digital world to the children in developing countries. They use Linux and Open Source software as this is a project were the per-computer budget is crucial. The aim is to start shipping $100 rugged-laptops next year. I find this initiatives of great value for bringing opportunities to millions of childs in many countries.

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/

Finally, and even more extreme, these visionary guys in University of Essex who built a mini-helicopter with a web server running on a mini computer under Linux. Phewww!

http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/staff/owen/research.htm

posted by avilella  # 11:38 AM