Xbox clusters?

[Josip Loncaric]

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?

Sincerely,
Josip

P.S. Sony's PS2 Linux Beta Kit has been announced this April in Japan
(see http://ps2.ign.com/news/33873.html or
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2712751,00.html).  Xbox
will probably not see anything similar from Microsoft.  Other game boxes
may be less powerful, but may have better prospects with Linux.  


-- 
Dr. Josip Loncaric, Research Fellow               mailto:josip at icase.edu
ICASE, Mail Stop 132C           PGP key at http://www.icase.edu./~josip/
NASA Langley Research Center             mailto:j.loncaric at larc.nasa.gov
Hampton, VA 23681-2199, USA    Tel. +1 757 864-2192  Fax +1 757 864-6134