you say that, but don't
PS2 and PS3 make ideal compute nodes for some applications like
rendering and 3D and 4D (time as the 4th) ?
a PS3 cluster is already out there somewhere...
especially if you take cost into account, a retail PS3 has the
processing power (if you can access it) of a number of P4 processors or
the like, and costs less!
PS2's were a bit slow to be honest, but with HDD's and networking,
along with Xboxes make good web servers for small scale. and use less
energy than a equivalent Piii or P4 system :-)
it quite a balance really. the multi-core processors from the PS3 (STI
cell) i expect used technology that was devised mainly for the HPC
market and the high end desktop. it's just risen in the gaming market
because people want games which need greater computational power.
likewise with gaming computers, they often use technologies and
techniques that have been around in the HPC world for some time. this
is no different. it's a tweaked network card for games... and rightly
as kyle spaans implied, it has no real benefit for the HPC, especially
beowulf, market as they already have other alternatives, lots of which
are significantly cheaper.
(or have i missed the point?)
what will be interesting is seeing STI cell's with heaps of memory...
Peter St. John wrote:
Gaming driving
supercomputing still makes me feel funny (but then, Ken Thompson and
Belle so...). But I'm picturing ganglionic head nodes with KillerNic
and playstations for compute nodes...
--
matt.
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