Supercomputers are used by governments and research institutions around the world to solve some of science's most complex problems, such as hurricane forecasting and modeling atomic weapons. In most cases, a supercomputer is actually a computing cluster that is comprised of hundreds or thousands of individual computers that are all linked together and controlled by software. Each individual computer is running similar processes in parallel, but when you combine all of their computing power you end up with a system that is far more powerful than any single computer by itself.

Supercomputers often take up the size of a basketball court and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but as Github user Wei Lin has demonstrated, it's possible to make a homebrew computing cluster that doesn't break the bank.