Students Power Supercomputer with Bicycles

inkslinger77 writes "A team of ten MIT students powered a supercomputer for twenty minutes by pedaling bicycles. They duly claimed the world record for human-powered computing (HPC). They powered a SiCortex SC648 supercomputer with a Linux cluster of 648 CPUs and almost 1TB of main memory in a single cabinet. The system is low-powered and draws 1,200 watts without needing special power supplies or cooling..."

Manufacturing uses energy too

[TurboStar]

"A spokesperson said that the human-powered session produced more computations than took place in the first 3,000 years of civilization." Except that they didn't pedal enough cover the development and manufacturing costs.

New record?

[Titoxd]

OK, so they broke the record for human-powered computing. But what was the previous record? Was there even such a thing as a previous record? How is this new record actually measured? You know that more people will now try to break the MIT mark, and TFA is rather scant on details...

Re:Question

[nopain-nogain]

10 guys, 1200watts... looool 20 minutes? even more lol... at my last performance diagnostics i had 320watts at the lactacid threshold, wich means this can be done for HOURS! ;)

pedal power overview

[morphovar]

Here you find a good overview of the possibilities of wind up power and bicycle machines [lowtechmagazine.com]

Conversion efficiency needs improvement

[plzdontspamme]

I once took part in a nutrition study that required each participant to ride a stationary bicycle for 20 min or so. I asked the lead researcher how much power a typical college student could produce. He said a healthy college student could produce about 180W for the duration of a test session.

The test itself was uncomfortable. There was no breeze to keep you cool (and, since the human body is only about 25% efficient, that meant you were dissipating > 500 W as heat), and you had to wear a mouthpiece to measure your oxygen uptake.

For that reason, I'm a little surprised that 10 cyclists without mouthpieces could only produce 1.2 kW for 20 min. Either their generators, drive mechanisms, and converters are not very efficient (most likely) or the MIT students need to do more exercise to get in better shape.

Re:Question

[nopain-nogain]

no i'm no superman, i'm only a seriouse mtb racing dude. the 300watts thresshold is my average marathon level (120km).
i have 4,1watts per kilo gramm body mass. tour de france dudes have about 5 w/kg.
so the 120w they are pedaling is (unless they wheight about 30kilos or so) really onle recreation ;) and schould be done for hours.
for those who wonder what i am doin here... yes i do studi informatik in germany ;p
black forrest 4 the win!

Bicycle Power Calculator

[rhennigan]

For those that aren't sure how watts measure up on a bicycle, use this calculator to figure out what equivalent speed that is. http://www.kreuzotter.de/english/espeed.htm [kreuzotter.de]