We at TechSmart, like much of the tech community are intensely intrigued by the prospect of modular phones, with Project Ara and Puzzlephone being among the early frontrunners in developing these exciting products. Part of modular phones' allure is the idea of customisation, and the ability to put together a smartphone that's perfectly catered to your unique needs. Don't need a 20 MP rear camera? Fine, just get a smaller 13 MP one and use the additional space for a faster processor.

One of the other major selling points is the potential reduce in waste. If an element (module) of your device becomes outdated or damaged, it's a simple manner of replacing that module and not the entire device itself. As far as damaged modules go, little can be done, but users who opt to upgrade specific modules have been identified by Finnish company Circular Devices (the people behind Puzzlephone) as the key to its Puzzlecluster supercomputer concept.

The modules in question are the processor units. Circular Devices believes that these discarded modules can be repurposed to handle the processing power of a "modular" computer. Puzzlephone took to their personal blog, which featured a concept drawing (featured below) of this repurposed processor at work, that it has dubbed Puzzlecluster. "Our goal is to deliver a scalable product that can meet the needs of home users and small and medium enterprises, but also public institutions and data centers," says Circular Devices. They added that "Its applications can range from research and data analysis, to rendering [data] farms and in-house cloud services, as well as any other case that requires parallel computing."

Still in the very early development phase, the Puzzlecluster is said to include a power supply, with internal connectivity to house the repurposed processors (or brain modules as they term it), as well as the necessary supporting components for peripheral plug-ins. There are also plans to integrate battery module slots, to enable UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) functionality for the Puzzlecluster. At this stage, no release date has been set for this ambitious project, but it is encouraging to see this Finnish manufacturer look beyond the normal life cycle that technology and products are often limited to having.