Xbox clusters?

[Steve Gaudet]

Hello,

> > On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 02:04:55PM -0500, Velocet's all...
> > > On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 12:50:46PM -0500, Josip Loncaric's all...
> > > > Microsoft's Xbox packages a 733 MHz Pentium III, 64 
> megabytes of memory,
> > > > a DVD drive, 100 Mbps Ethernet, and an 8-gigabyte hard 
> disk for about
> > > > $300.  This would make it a reasonably powerful cluster 
> node with an
> > > > excellent price/performance ratio.  Of course, the thing runs a
> > > > slimmed-down variant of Windows 2000 instead of Linux, 
> but has anyone
> > > > discussed making an Xbox cluster?
> > >
> > > Why bother when for about $300 USD you can put together a
> > > cluster node with a 1.333GHz athlon with 256Mb of DDR ram?
> > >
> > > Sides, who brought 'price/performance' onto this list? 
> Dont know thats never a
> > > factor on the beowulf list? :)
> > 
> > So, the question is, with these numbers, how do people end 
> up spending
> > $250K on 40 or even 60-CPU clusters?
> > 

A low cost system can be built when using MicroATX cases with 145w ps, costs
$35.00 and up. For motherboards, I'd look at solid performers like Intel's
D815EGEWLU and S815EBM1(1u bd).

Here's the list of approved case options.

http://www.formfactors.org/searchproducts.asp#


Intel's motherbds have a 3 year warranty and don't have some flaky problems
seen on clones.

http://program.intel.com/shared/products/boards/d815egew/index.htm

http://program.intel.com/shared/products/servers/boards/S815EBM1/index.htm

The s815ebm1 is a slick motherbd, built for a 1u case and supports Tualatin,
costs about $35.00 more than the d815egewlu. The nice thing is they both
have video, fast ethernet, ATA100, etc...

 
> They buy from IBM/Compaq/HP or pick your favorite mainstream vendor.

If you find a Compaq GEM partner(we are), your fall into Government,
Educational, and Medical category, you can't beat the deals Compaq is
offering right now.  For New England they have a Evo D500, PIV 1.5Ghz, 845,
20Gb, 256mb, WIN2000, CD for $667.00 up to December 12th. Moreover if its a
quantity they do even better on the price.

FYI: This deal might be available elsewhere, don't know.

Cheers,


Steve Gaudet 
Linux Solutions Engineer
   ..... 
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