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First 96-Node Desktop Cluster Ships
Panaphonix writes "The Register reports that Orion Multisystems is shipping the first 96-node desktop cluster. 'With the new, larger system, customers get pretty much the most powerful computer around that can plug into a standard electrical socket.' According to the spec sheet, the DS-96 runs Fedora Core 2 and gets 110 GFlops sustained, 230 GFlops peak."
$100,000/96 = ~$1,000.
Not a bad deal.
paintball
I know this thing is nice because of the power requirements and the fact that you don't need a dedicated server room to store it, but for $100,000, you can get Microway to build you a pimptacular cluster with Dual-Opteron nodes, high-speed memory and a phat interconnect with either myrinet or infiniband. You will get a lot more work done for the same price.
You forgot a couple of things:
* HVAC costs
* Realestate costs
Remember, this is a deskside cluster. Try that with your dual-opteron cluster. And try adding up all the costs.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
He's also forgotten about hiring an extra 2 guys at least to maintain the extra machines. A selling point of this box will be that "it just works". Pay for a support contract and wammo, you've got a cheap low maintainence cluster. For people working on top-secret stuff (who else needs clusters? ;-), hiring people is a risk and the vetting process is expensive.