Boot a CD and Make Your X-Box Join the Cluster

jaromil writes "Last week at the Linux Expo UK in London the dyne:bolic distribution was shown to boot on a XBOX console automatically joining a cluster of other PCs on the fly, there is also an article on ZDNet UK covering the story." The article also discusses some of the issues with getting unsigned code to run on the X-Box.

Comments

xbox too slow for the cost

[Carbon Unit 549]

As a builder of clusters, I can tell you that we are always looking for more bang for the buck. The xbox is cpu is at least 5 times slower than a Pentium 4 3 GHz cpu. Thus, it needs to be at least five times cheaper (including extra network and power comsumption overhead). A shuttle box with 1 GB Ram and GHz cpu goes for about $750. So at best, the xbox is barely breaking even at $150 per node. When you add chipping costs, network switches, power consumption, floor space and parallel efficiency, the xbox loses.

The playstation efforts, are to program the vector units, not just use the general cpu. Even with that it is not worth it now, but it is hoped that the experience gained with ps2 might translate to a quicker porting to ps3.