A student and his professor have built a supercomputer which is twice as fast as Deep Blue.

Tim Brom and Joel Adams built Microwulf for less than $100/Gflop,” said Adams.

Deep Blue, the IBM-created supercomputer, beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, cost nearly $5 million.

Microwulf can process 26.25 gigaflops, or 26.25 billion double-precision floating point instructions, per second.

It is based on four dual-core motherboards connected by an 8-port Gigabyt Ethernet switch. The connected components form a three-tiered system that looks like a triple-decker sandwich.

The computer can also plug into a standard 120V wall outlet and is portable.

More here.