Brick Tower of Superpower
“Legos seem to have an uncanny ability
for multiplying in my house at an almost
exponential rate,” says the 29-year-old race
engine builder and designer. “First you build
models, then it’s Star Wars, then it’s your
phone, your jewelry. Before things are said
and done you’ve got nooks, bins, and chests
full of them. I’ve been addicted to Legos for
longer than I can remember, so when the
opportunity comes up to work on a new project of some sort, the question that invariably
arises is, ‘Can I use Legos?’”
But he didn’t just build the machine as a
way to offload some extra Legos — it was
also for a good cause. It’s connected to the
World Community Grid (WCC), which uses
distributed computing to tackle humanitarian projects, like medical research. The WCC
currently has almost two million connected
devices and makes its technology available
to organizations whose research might otherwise not be completed due to the highly
prohibitive costs of computer infrastructure.
Mike Schropp could very well be the next
Lego superhero minifigure — sorry, Batman!
—Jerry James Stone
totalgeekdom.com/?p=572
Using more than 2,000 Legos and some mad
computer skills, Mike Schropp of Livonia,
Mich., built a fully operational supercomputer
that’s not only awesome, but helps in the
fight against diseases like cancer and HIV.
The machine uses three Intel Core
i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz processors
overclocked to a full 4.7GHz, three Asus
P8P67-M motherboards, 28 gigs of RAM, and
just one Antec HCP-1200 power supply. Intel’s
Core i7 is unlocked for modifications just like
this, so the skill once required for such a task
has now been eliminated, as well as much of
the risk. And the case is constructed mostly
of Legos!
Mike Schropp
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