Saw this at news.com.com: a bunch of scientists from the NCSA have built a supercomputer based on the PS2 chips running on Linux in a cluster:

As perhaps the clearest evidence yet of the power of sophisticated but inexpensive game consoles, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has assembled a supercomputer from an army of Sony PlayStation 2 devices.

The resulting system, with components purchased at retail prices, cost a little more than $50,000. Researchers at the supercomputing center believe the system may be capable of a half trillion operations a second, well within the definition of supercomputer, although it may not rank among the world's 500 fastest supercomputers.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the project, which uses the open-source Linux operating system, is that the only hardware engineering involved was placing 70 of the individual game machines in a rack and plugging them together with a high-speed Hewlett-Packard network switch. The center's scientists bought 100 machines but are holding 30 in reserve, possibly for high-resolution display application.

I remembered reading somewhere a while back that it was illegal to export PS2 to Iraq or something, because there was fear that they could gather the parts and technology to build themselves a supercomputer like this. I thought that was a bit far fetched but then I saw this project.... promoted forum item

Nice,

I also heard that s*** about illeagle exportations, but i dono if it was Iraq, and i think it might have been the xbox insted of the ps2 (Well it was one of em)

coz they wanted to use em to kill everyone :P

Also who ever it was had put in a big order for the consoles earlier and got quite afew or somthin

http://arrakis.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ps2/cluster.php from OCAU linkage

http://arrakis.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ps2/ps2_cluster_pic_02.jpg

70 PS2's = 1 xbox well almost!

Whats that? The sales ratio between PS2s and Xboxs? Sounds about right.

Heh,
I wonder what really is better, the Xbox or the PS2?

They both have nice features, but ive never really decided which i'd rather, my friend got his Xbox chipped and got a 80gb hd in it, and he copies games he borrows out to the drive and plays them off there with the Evo-X menu thingie..

I dont think i have many friends with PS2s, any that do have them , i havn't tried em.

The linux dev kit != the Linux version for PS2.

70 PS2's

That would be a fat linux server.

Think of all power that would chew????

Think of all power that would chew????

Or the noise! My ps2 fan is so fricken loud i have to sometimes turn the surround system up, to get over it.