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Building a Linux XBOX Cluster
Hack Jandy writes "Getting Linux to work on an XBOX became relatively easy a few years ago, and building an XBOX render farm became the next logical solution. Anandtech bought 8 XBOXes and clustered them into a neat project any hardware hacker could appreciate. Check out the results as Anand pits his 8-way cluster against some Xeon and Opteron workstations as well."
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of . . . errr, wait a second.
gorilla wearing a tutu.
What did you think I was going to say?
make it an LXXX-Box?
Here.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Finally a real hardware story! How many YRO stories did we have to slog through to get to this kind of meaty story?
Clustering XBoxes? What kind of maniac would even consider that kind of thing? My kind of maniac, I guess!
Click here to enlarge
I didn't even have to click it. I'm already there, man!
Somewhere out there in the world there are 8 little boys who are crying because they can't play Halo 2.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
it has a dark side, a light side, and it holds the universe together Oh and XBOX Beowulf clusters :)
- Page 8
Amazing restraint by the good folks at Amandtech not to pander to the Slashdot crowd with an easy, "Imagine a...."A Beowulf Cluster
So far, we have played around a little bit with the idea of a stand-alone XBOX doing some neat things. But what if we want to actually make a high availability processing cluster across all of our Linux machines at once? This is the murkier world of XBOX PCs, distributed computing. There are a lot of really good documents detailing how to set up a secure, robust and stable Beowulf Cluster, but this isn't one of them. We only want to benchmark 8 XBOXes in parallel operation.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Keep in mind that the specific benchmarks used scale well with clusters. Many other workstation apps won't. For those you'll still want the $3400 SMP Opteron ;-)
Now we have a Beowulf Cluster of bad XBox Beowulf Cluster posts.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I remember something about selling mod chips being illegal, however I didn't follow the story very closely...
A low cost linux xbox for a server would be cool though, does anybody know if I could legally buy a mod chip to run linux?
You mean, a few years ago when they started selling XBoxes...?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
I doubt they even tested the scripts as pasted:
... do
...; do
#!/bin/bash
for i 192.168.1.11 192.168.1.12 192.168.1.13
ssh root@i argv
end
should be
#!/bin/bash
for i in 192.168.1.11 192.168.1.12 192.168.1.13
ssh root@$i argv
end
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
http://arrakis.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ps2/cluster.php
i think this was on slashdot a few years ago.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
If you think about it, its a way to build a very large scaled out cluster using dirt cheap commody hardware. Where could something liek this be used? try your local high school or vocational school. Wanna build a cluster to give hands on experiance to the students? 20 cluster nodes for under 3 grand
I'd just like to point out that the point of a cluster is not to link together a bunch of cheap machines to save money; the time and energy required to write paralleled programs far exceed the cost of hardware. Rather, the point is to gather the highest end commodity machines you can afford and attain mainframe-level performance.
the spoiler? its not worth the time or effort - the XBox has too little memory to be effective at really anything...
= Grow a brain...
And slashdot has reported it exactly 200 times.
Guess what? XBoxes make shitty cluster nodes. Whaddasurprise.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
wasnt this done last year??
here?
Price:
PC < Xbox + modChip
CPU:
Xbox < PC
RAM:
Xbox < PC
Cool:
PC < Xbox - (that's arguable considering you are adding to the Xbox sales figures.)
WTF? This one I just dont get (beyond why not)
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
There are very stable software-only hacks to get a hacked BIOS installed. The best one is called UDE. I uses a buffer overflow in the font handling calls of the Xbox dashboard (actually a replacement dashboard). Then it installs its own BIOS and runs its own software.
Here is the skinny. I use this to launch XBMC and turn the xbox (w/ remote) into a very nice media center for every tv in my house. Plus, it plays games.
Note that these tests only uses the computing power of the main processor, while the GPU is sitting idly by doing nothing. With a little effort, and perhaps the use of some tools that harness the computing power of the gpu, these clusters would get a lot faster. It may not help in tasks like the distributed kernel compile, but things like parallel raytracing which can use the massively parallel floating point capabilities of the xbox graphics card could really benefit here.
In the future, the playstation 3 will really provide an opportunity for some enterprising cluster builders for couple of reasons. First, the initial release of most console hardware is where the manufacturer sells them for the biggest loss. Sony actually makes money on PS2s now even if you don't buy any games, but when they release the PS3, they'll be selling at a loss and your performance-to-cost ratio is going to be huge. Secondly, if the architecture decisions behind the PS3 make it anything like the PS2, it will be much easier to harness the vector engines for general purpose calculations (compared to other graphics cards). Most of the horsepower in the PS2 (and potentially in the PS3) is in it's parallel vector engines. While the general purpose processor is reasonably fast (300 mhz mips), the vector units can dispatch a ton of parallel floating point operations which enable it to run games that would crush a 300 mhz pentium with a comparable circa-2000 graphics card.
Doom 3 jokes? Alright, I'll take a stab:
Finally, now I can play Doom 3 on my XBOX!
1. That's how that one XBOX emulator works, CXBX.
2. Yes, I have heard of it, can't recall the name of the group producing them.
Moll.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
There's only 3 reasons you'd buy a modchip for an Xbox (pick one).
1. You have an Xbox version 1.6 or higher.
2. You want to turn it off to play on Live.
3. You like wasting money.
ALL Xboxes prior to the 1.6 have a reflashable BIOS chip (referred to incorrectly by Xbox modders as a "TSOP" due to the packaging of the IC itself). There's several ways to do exploits to run Linux to run the Raincoat reflashing software, the easiest of which is a gamesave exploit. You can build a memory card reader/writer (to transfer the gamesave) in about 5 minutes by splicing together an Xbox joystick extension cable and a USB cable. You can find an exploitable game at a used game shop, at Blockbuster or on eBay. Solder two points together on the motherboard to enable the write lines and you're good to go. I've lost count of how many Xboxes I've modded this way. Works perfect every time.
All this info is on Xbox-Scene, it truly surprises me AnandTech made a $75 X 8 mistake.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
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