Houston: Virginia Tech's scientists led by a 30 year old Indian American assistant professor of computer science, Dr Srinidhi Varadarajan have amazed the computing industry by putting together the world's third fastest supercomputer in a record time of three months, and at record low cost of $ 5.2 million, using off-the-shelf components.

Most other machines of its class cost upward of $ 40 million and take years to assemble. Japan's Earth Simulator, the number one supercomputer, is said to have cost at least $ 350 million. The Terascale Cluster project is bringing Virginia Tech to the forefront in the supercomputing arena.

A supercomputer made from 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5s, nicknamed by some as "Big Mac" ranks third among the world's 500 fastest supercomputers, many of which handle with ease one trillion calculations per second.

The Top 500 is twice a year listing started in 1993 to provide a "Who's Who" of hot computers, spotting and tracking trends in high-performance computing. The ranking by the Top 500 project will be officially announced later this month at the Supercomputing Conference in Phoenix.

According to Dr Varadarajan, "this is arguably the cheapest supercomputer and is definitely the most powerful home-built supercomputer." Theoretically, Big Mac could handle a potential 17 teraflops, or 17 trillion operations per second. That still falls short of the No. 1 machine, Japan's Earth Simulator, whose 5,000-plus processors keep it on top with 35.8 teraflops, with the potential of another five teraflops.

PTI