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Playstation 2 Linux Cluster at NCSA
Mr. Spock writes "The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is looking at scientific computing on the Sony Playstation 2. They've set up a cluster with 65 compute nodes. They're running Linux for Playstation 2. What will they think of next?"
Imagine a cluster of...
Oh.
imagine two thirds of the comments mentioning a beowulf cluster of something!
oh wait..
What do we have left to imagine _now_?
the nodes started competing with each other and yelling "w00t w00t". In the end no work got done.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
This reminds me of an episode of one of the cartoons I read. Written by a Nuclear Engineering PhD at Berkeley, the strip is quite funny. Here is the one this reminds me of.
There's no sig like SIGSEG
What will they think of next?
Probably clusters of just about any cheap all-identical hardware. It seems to suit the concept of clustering well. Sony have already done all the marketing and hardware price cutting to get the machines out there and used, while subsidising that cost with the games they sell. They'll only get cheaper. On top of that, they're identical systems that'll stay pretty much the same for the next 2-3 years. Good for spares in the future when three of your boxes have worn out, and the pet rat belonging to professor sieslak upstairs has pissed in two.
Sounds good to me!
The real reason for using consoles is that this cluster has a higher resale value, so when the project is done, they can make some of their money back.
I feel I should make a WMD joke here...but I won't.
Windows of Mass Destruction
there