About a guy who's built a computer himself

When you think of doing something yourself there's a perfect example for you - Bruce Allen. He's the world known guy with his reputation of the best in "do-it-yourselfing". To monitor the results of gravitational-wave research he needed a supercomputer and he's built it himself with his friends.

That happened in 1998, and three more supercomputers had been built for about the same purpose since then.

Now you can find his most recent work, a cluster of 1,680 engines, in Germany (Hannover). Actually, it's a 6,720-core processor and in several months after it was launched it was counted number 58 in the world.

There are several reasons why Allen decided to build his own machine. One is that he thinks he save a lot of his money doing the work himself. In his view it's better to make an engine yourself than go to a company and order it there. He explains that huge IT companies have a lot of extra expenses and also you need to pay for the brandname.

Another reason is experience. "IT companies provide you with good products, and you don't need to have any special skills or special knowledge to buy and to use them," he says. And he's really proud of his achievements.

The third advantage of building your own supercomputer is that you can control it. For example, you can find a lot of delays using a shared computer. Allen complains that at the Caltech center for supercomputer applications he had to put aside his jobs and wait two and even more days until he had an opportunity to work.

Allen has no special courses in building supercomputers. The best teacher for him was Beowulf open-source clustering technology. Allen is convinced that for people who are able to set up Linux network it’s possible to build a computer themselves if they need it and have some money. In his view no particular expertise needed.

Allen is deeply convinced that his supercomputers being the tools for monitoring gravitational waves are really an unsurpassed tools for new discoveries about the universe.