Re. XBox clusters

[Joel Jaeggli]

I'd also note that in my latest pc-connection catalog... 1.1ghz celerons 
with 128MB of ram and 20GB drives and nics from compaq are $499. Myself I 
prefer to build them rather than use srinkwrap pc's but passable boxes 
with warranties are out there...

joelja

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Jonathan Coupe wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Josip Loncaric" <josip at icase.edu>
> To: "Beowulf mailing list" <beowulf at beowulf.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 5:50 PM
> Subject: Xbox clusters?
> 
> 
> > Microsoft's Xbox packages a 733 MHz Pentium III, 64 megabytes of memory,
> > a DVD drive, 100 Mbps Ethernet, and an 8-gigabyte hard disk for about
> > $300.  This would make it a reasonably powerful cluster node with an
> > excellent price/performance ratio.  Of course, the thing runs a
> > slimmed-down variant of Windows 2000 instead of Linux, but has anyone
> > discussed making an Xbox cluster?
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Josip
> >
> 
> I remember people speculating in a similar way re. the Dreamcast. (I did.)
> In practice I doubt that a game console will ever be a better bet for
> clustering than a PC. Firstly, most of the transistor budget goes into the
> 3D card, where it's efectively useless for us. Secondly, PC's track the
> price of cpu's, etc, much more quickly than consoles. If a console was
> *really* heavily subsidised by its maker - consoles usually are subsidised
> at luanch time - it could start cheaper than the PC. But in a few months it
> would have lost this price advantage.
> 
> - Jonathan Coupe
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
> 

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Joel Jaeggli				       joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu    
Academic User Services			     consult at gladstone.uoregon.edu
     PGP Key Fingerprint: 1DE9 8FCA 51FB 4195 B42A 9C32 A30D 121E
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of
arms.  Karl Marx -- Introduction to the critique of Hegel's Philosophy of
the right, 1843.