On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 09:49:54PM -0500, Johann Koenig wrote: > On Wednesday February 25 at 09:45pm > Pigeon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 12:48:29PM -0600, Raiz-mpx wrote: > > > From: Johann Koenig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > >The ultimate in SMP is, of course, Sun Computers. Hundreds of CPUs, > > > >Hundreds of Gigs of RAM, Hundreds of thousands of dollars. > > > > ...or the cheaper alternative... racks of Playstation 2s, running > > Linux. (Found this on dead-tree, but I'm sure Google would find it.) > > Very interesting, but how is this different than a stack of <generic > cheap motherboard>? They can't be selling them at so much of a loss as > to drop the price enough to compete with computers that have *no* sound, > *no* video, *no* hard drive (diskless isn't too hard to set up), *no* > case, et cetera. After all, I got a dual PPro board with 2x200mhz and > 128mb ram for $30. If they are readily available (in quantity), I don't > see getting a cheap enough computer to be an issue.
I think the point is that the graphics processor uses a variation of RISC technology, and can be used to perform "scientific" calculations at a rate comparable with x86-type processors clocked at a gig or more. When you add up the cost of say a 1.2GHz processor, motherboard, RAM, case and putting them all together, and take into account that the playstation is smaller, uses less power and is easier to order in bulk than behind-the-times PCs, it probably is competitive. -- Pigeon Be kind to pigeons Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F
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