Ars Technica takes a look at the inner workings of the KLAT2 Supercomputer, an Athlon Linux cluster that made headlines for delivering over 64 Gigaflops under US$41,000. Using an innovative Flat Network Neighborhood topology and optimising the use of 3DNow!, the testbed is a facinating way to obtain phenomenal computing power!

KLAT2, Kentucky Linux Athlon Testbed 2, made news not because it is yet another "Beowulf" cluster (YABC), but because it uses a couple of new technologies to improve the parallelism without increasing the cost of the system, thus achieving over 64 GFLOPS for about $41,000. The nicest thing about these two new technologies is that we implemented them by creating tools that anyone can use to build and program their own supercomputers. So, when you saw the stories about KLAT2's record price/performance, you were only seeing the result of the first application of these tools.