Playstation II clusters

I came across this
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/users/hpm/book97/ch3/processor.list

trying to figure out how fast my stock 8500 was compared to a Quadra 650, and noticed the Playstation II at 5000 MIPS blew away the Cray2 at 824 MPS (as well as my 8500). I remembered (a few years ago) the IT and development guys joking at NewsStand that they were going to replace the 12-proc S/80s with Playstations, but I didn't realize how much sense there really was in that...

the tease:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2940422.stm

the cluster (one of many, I am assuming by now):
http://arrakis.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ps2/cluster.php

and then I came across this about the patents for the Playstation3
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7078

a 4GHz machine running at 256GFLOPS (that has to be a typo, right?)

though, this seems to support that (Sony to make it 1000 times faster than the playstation2)
http://www.psreporter.com/playstation_3_news.html
looks like they're having memory speed issues, no doubt

so... in theory, a cluster of 250 Playstation3's would spank the Earth Simulator? (yes, a question!)
What about 2200 of them?

catmistake's picture

I swear I put this in the right place under "other computers"
Moderator?

Tiger G5 Kid's picture

10,000 G5s could rip the crap out of the Earth Simulator any day, and be at least $200M cheaper. Why don't they do that?

catmistake's picture

10,000 G5s would cost a lot more than PS3s... (even a year from now, a G5 will be much more.)

And it wouldn't even be funny. Now a PS3 cluster, with only 250-nodes beating the mighty Earth Simulator... that's entertainment.