Human Powered Supercomputing

Green supercomputing is becoming a fact and a new generation of compact and energy-efficient computers is emerging. A supercomputer 10 times more energy efficient and up to 300 times faster than its traditional equivalents has been unveiled in Scotland last march.

But making your supercomputer low power enough that you can run it using pedal power is something new.

SiCortex, a company that is building a new generation of massively parallel computers. graphically illustrated the opportunity for dramatic power saving today by demonstrating the first high performance computer powered solely by a team of bicyclists. The computer, an SC648, conducted a complex genomics analysis at a rate of billions of calculations per second while being powered by a team of 8-10 bicyclists riding generator-equipped bicycles.

The SC648 consumes about 1500 watts to produce a half Teraflop with a Terabyte of main memory. With 10 members of the cycling team, that means that each bicyclist is producing about 150 watts of power output.