That was confusing and badly written ("This was not the first time I get entrepreneurial ideas.") so I've read it several times and I still can't figure out what he's on about.
Is his idea that somebody might want to pay to use his three-CPU, inhomogeneous, linked-by-ethernet cluster of useless old machines?
Or does he want to expand it to a bigger inhomogeneous cluster of useless old machines, until he figures out that he's going to need a much bigger air conditioner (somewhere around the 16 CPU mark)?
Realistically the compute-density of anything but made-for-purpose kit at the moment makes clustering desktop PCs at any scale economically infeasible. We think in units of computational power per kilowatt (including cooling) and per tonne of floor loading nowadays.
The only play in the desktop space is hoovering up unused cycles on desktops that an organization happens to own anyway, primarily for interactive use.
Also, that FORTRAN is a strong presence in numerical computing is very, very common knowledge. Someone who learnt that yesterday is unlikely to have much experience with large-scale computation... Certainly not enough to pull off the democratization of supercomputing by himself.
VCs claim to hate pitches where the founders don't know their market. I never understood why -- until i read this post. Not a single link to prior art, no explanation of why his solution will be better than anything else. no compelling problem to solve.
The author's blog would be better if the author focused on problem 2: "I require a lot of number crunching now and then. time is a premium." Tell us more! He might be onto something, but I can't figure it out.
Is his idea that somebody might want to pay to use his three-CPU, inhomogeneous, linked-by-ethernet cluster of useless old machines?
Or does he want to expand it to a bigger inhomogeneous cluster of useless old machines, until he figures out that he's going to need a much bigger air conditioner (somewhere around the 16 CPU mark)?