Design West is underway this week at the San Jose Convention Center. There are plenty of people in attendance, both in the sessions and in the Exhibit Hall, particularly at the Intel booth.

Intel’s a popular destination at the show, because they’ve got on display there a very interesting thing.

First shown at last fall’s Intel Developers Conference, it’s a musical ensemble that plays when a swarm of several thousand 1″ pellets fly up and out of various hoppers and dispensers and land on the music-making parts of the Rube-Goldberg-like contraption.

The resulting 3-minute concert is captivating from a musical point of view, and fascinating from an engineering point of view. You can see several clips of the performance below.

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