With increasing regularity you are seeing stories pop-up about how Universities are building cheap supercomputers stringing together commodity-processor powered desktops or appliances. The recent decision by Cray to build an AMD powered supercomputer is yet another testimonial.

bq. The supercomputer maker is preparing a line of products based on the AMD-powered Red Storm machine that it is building for the Department of Energy. [CNET News.com]

I had coffee with Chris Miller, one of the early proponents of open source software (and a founder of TurboLinux) who pointed out that the “Hammer” chip is going to take over the super computing world. The x86-compliant Hammer nee Opetron is on a roll for one simple reason: most of the clustering software is Linux-based and sure enough, Hammer is very Linux friendly.

What is surprising is that Intel, which for years has been a proponent of spreading x86 everywhere has lost touch with its own inner self. It is pushing Itanium, which no one seems to give two hoots about. At least not in the super-computing world.