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Anonymous Will Award $200,000 for Xbox Linux
An anonymous reader writes: "The X-box Linux Project at Sourceforge reports today that an anonymous donor will award nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the individuals responsible for the completion of a two-phased effort to run Linux on the Xbox. One can't help but wonder if this will help or hurt the community. On one hand, it is likely to generate additional interest in the project, on the other, some people may be less inclinded to share their discoveries with money on the line.
Then again, getting both Money and Glory sounds pretty good."
Note that the reward isn't all-or-nothing - it's partitioned into five distinct tasks, in two separate porjects. That also means that different people can claim the prize money for each task. If two groups solve the same problem, the "better" solution gets all the money.
Project A:
Task 1: Replacement BIOS - $55,000
Task 2: Kernel and XFree drivers
- 25,000
Task 3: Kernel logic: FATX and miscellaneous - 10,000
Task 4: XBE bootloader $10,000
Project B:
Run unsigned code on an Xbox without any hardware modification - $100,000
Ahem.
A cluster of 1000 Xboxes would be mighty cheap computing power.
I'm too lazy to actually calculate this, but I have to wonder about the $$ feasibility of an XBox cluster. Okay, I could believe it's a better value to hack an XBox than to buy a PC for gaming, if you don't take future upgrades into account. (GeForce 6's and Radeon 12000's probably won't have a USB or ethernet interface; just a guess.)
But if you want to make the ubiquitous Beowulf cluster of XBoxen to crunch numbers, is it really more cost effective? Even if someone figures out how to put Linux on there without a hardware mod, you need to consider that the graphics and sound capabilities built-in won't be used in the cluster.
Don't compare an XBox cluster to a cluster of Linux gaming machines but to a cluster of bare-bones dual-cpu boxen or rackmount servers with no or minimal video, sound and i/o capability. Plus compare the power consumption, cooling and space requrements of the two since this becomes nontrivial with a cluster.
Plus, who with such high number-crunching needs would put up with the dearth of hardware support for Linux on XBox. You can't just swap out a motherboard, power supply or ethernet card on those puppies, at least not as easily as a desktop, tower or rack PC.
I don't think an XBox cluster is reasonably feasible beyond the geek in me saying "that's so cool that someone did that!" However for us Linux geeks and gamers I'd love to have Linux on XBoxes. (Not necessarily to own one, before you Linux Dreamcasters jump on me.)
http://www.xboxhacker.net/
The BIOS hacking forums there is a focus of efforts to reverse-engineer the X-Box for the purpose of allowing Linux to run on it.
In the last few weeks we have successfully recovered the RC4 key used to encrypt the second bootloader in the BIOS, this has led to discoveries about the PIC chip that have allowed a minimal clean BIOS to run for the first time.
I also run a site at http://warmcat.com/milksop which has a variety of GPL hardware designs that are of use in getting the X-Box to run Linux (although they have many other applications).
On the prize, I worry it will change the ethos of people working towards this goal, which until now has shown the best side of people with a common, righteous purpose working together.