MICROCONTROLLERS

Since we’re slinging unsolicited advice, here’s a bit more: if someone shares their accomplishment, regardless of how fundamentally flawed it is, it costs you nothing and is far more helpful to say “Hey, that’s awesome! I like how you did $FEATURE. Great job!” and stop right there than to be condescending and nitpicky.

Sure. You first. Please tell me what $FEATURE of this cluster you like. The best I got is "It looks like Cray from the 80s", but I've usually cared about more software or hardware features than just looks.

I don't necessarily think that clusters need to be built out of the latest-and-greatest parts. I really do think that a Rasp.Pi Cluster with MPI is more than enough for many students and hobbyists. I also think there are other parts you can use to do that (ex: maybe use a TI Sitara or something), and you'd actually get something respectable from a software perspective.

And BTW: Zynq FPGA is low-end and relatively basic. Its again, the software (or in this case, the VHDL or Verilog design you program into the FPGA). Everyone in this hobby can afford a Zynq, with some dev-boards in the $150 range. That's why I pushed it in my post earlier. If that's still too much for you, there's cheaper FPGAs but Zynq is a good one to start with since its an ARM core + FPGA combo, which is very useful in practice.