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?
What the...?
I swear I put this in the right place under "other computers"
Moderator?
I don't get it.
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?
get really cheap
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.