Xbox clusters?

[W Bauske]

Velocet wrote:
> 
> 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?
> 

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

It's unusual for a large corp to be off putting it's own PC's together.

Wes