Big BLU Sper Computer

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

Following up my own comment, I'd like  to  mention  the  question  of
hardware  for linking a cluuster together.  I've read a few things on
the topic, but not enough to give me a feel for the topic. What would
be some good options for a "home" super computer?

Actually, my interest historically has been  more  in  techniques  of
making  a  widely-distributed  collection of machines act as a single
machine.  This would generally give somewhat different answers to all
"how to do it" questions.  If the nodes are on different sides of the
planet (or in orbit), you can't get sub-microsecond messaging, unless
you have an upgrade to the speed of light.

It's now been almost exactly 20 years since I built my  first  "host"
whose  cpus  were in several different time zones.  And, of course, a
whole bunch of people  did  this  earlier.   (Google  for  "Newcastle
Connection"  for an interesting example.) So I keep thinking that one
approach would be to just have  members  of  "Big  BLU"  in  lots  of
people'  basements,  talking  via  whatever  network  connections are
available.  Maybe with a "flash mob" scheme for adding  and  deleting
machines  dynamically.  I wonder how close to a real "super computer"
we could get with this approach?