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Microsoft Software Linux Hardware

Xbox Linux Cluster 201

Posted by timothy from the imagine-away dept.
aeiz writes "Adam Cecchetti put together a Linux cluster using 3 modded Xboxes and was quite surprised with the results. He used the Mandrake Linux distro." illumin8 summarizes Cecchetti's conclusion after investigating "the cost-effectiveness (or lack thereof) and trouble involved in setting up a 3 node Linux cluster based on the Microsoft hardware. The end result: A cheaper Walmart PC would perform better at the same task."
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Xbox Linux Cluster More

Xbox Linux Cluster

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  • was quite suprised with the results.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:13PM (#5190461)
    After all that, chicks still didn't dig him.

  • Surprised? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:15PM (#5190472)
    Quite surprised by the result? Does that mean that Microsoft didn't threaten legal action?

  • Mariodrake (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I want a Nintendo Mariodrake cluster!

    -Zelda

  • Nice. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Squidgee ( 565373 )
    Finally, legal beowulf cluster jokes for the trolls!


    Suprised this worked, myself. Possibly the furture of super-cheap supercomputers?

    • Re:Nice. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:25PM (#5190536)
      Possibly the furture of super-cheap supercomputers?

      Ok, now I know it is too much trouble for the average slashdotter to actually read the articles before commenting, BUT PLEASE! How about READING THE FUCKING DESCRIPTION? Once again for the slow people: "The end result: A cheaper Walmart PC would perform better at the same task."

      While it might be fun to mod an xbox to run linux to output content on a tv, it is worse than pointless to build a computational cluster with them.

  • Quick Summary... and a Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mikeage ( 119105 ) <.slashdot. .at. .mikeage.net.> on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:16PM (#5190484) Homepage
    Basically, this guy modded three XBox's, put on Mandrake, didn't like the minimal compillation tools it came with, fixed it, and is done. He was impressed with the network performance... not because it was so good, but because he thought it had 10Mbps (it has 100). Ding-dong.. hello... anyone home? Read the specs!

    This is news why?
    • I'm a bit confused as well...

      Why would you want to buy an XBox for this in general? It's somewhat difficult to determine the cost factors here, but I would think you could buy just as powerful of a MB/CPU/RAM combo (actually, you could get a better CPU easily) cheaper. Heck, it's hard to even find people still selling 733 Celerons.

      The only thing that might blow the budget is the video card you would need (it's a specialized G2, right?), and if you're clustering them, what's the point of having a good video card?

      Seems like a fun little project, but the article seemed pretty light on actual performance data, etc.

      • Re:Quick Summary... and a Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Ghengis ( 73865 ) <SLowLaRIS&xNIX,Rules> on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:06PM (#5190659) Homepage Journal
        if you're clustering them, what's the point of having a good video card?


        Not that you would use X-boxes for this, but on a similar note, some visualization clusters are specifically meant to harness the power of the video cards. The MB, CPU's and ram are just there because they have to be there (you can't plug 1024 video cards into one x86 box!)

      • If you rtfa, like you pretended, you would have seen that he reached the same conclusions.

        Quote from article:

        The XBOX unit functions well as a desktop computer for general usage, email, web browsing, etc. The total cost of the unit with keyboard, mouse, and parts came to 383.72 dollars. However, it is not as cost effective or as easy as using a general PC obtainable from almost anywhere for the same purpose. The technical merit of soldering the usb to XBOX controller wires as well as installing the mod chip are beyond the technical skills of most. In short if you already have an XBOX and want to tinker/need a computer and have no fear of the possibility of ruining your unit then this is a viable solution. However, as a general replacement to a desktop pc, the XBOX is not nearly as userfriendly or cost effective as a 200 dollar pc from walmart.

        And your point was, what?
        • I read the whole article. My point was why even do the experiment. It's pretty easy to tell you could spend less cash and get more raw processing power from a cheap CPU/MB combo.

          This of course is not taking into consideration the video card's power (like others have pointed out) if you're trying to do some sort of vector processing that you can do faster on the GPU, or some sort of rendering. Why didn't he try to do something in that area and maybe make this a worthwhile experiment.

          In summary, the whole experiment seemed sort of pointless when you can easily tell which way the experiment is going to go ahead of time. He does one benchmark and gives very little in the way of results.

          Like I said, it might be a fun little project and all, but this seems sort of pointless from the viewpoint of useful information. It was a fun article to read, but you walk away from it saying to yourself "yep, figured that...".

      • Re:Quick Summary... and a Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ReelOddeeo ( 115880 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:15PM (#5190707)
        Why would you want to buy an XBox for this in general?

        If you RTFA you will see that he didn't buy them. He received funds from his university to do this. He remarks that the XBox worked great as a general computing platform.

        So why would you want to do this in general? Because if you can get someone else to pay for it, you get three useful Linux computers to use for some period of time, in exchange for producing your experimental results.
        • I read the article. My point is if he's trying to ACTUALLY determine whether the XBox is a viable platform for SOMEONE to buy it and use for clustering, it's pretty obvious what the result is going to be ahead of time.

          ALSO: What "experimental results"? A single benchmark with very little accuracy or explanation that you can point at and say "I could do that cheaper with 3 PC's" before you even do the benchmark?

          I can only assume he gave more results to the people who actually gave him the check, but I don't know.

      • Re:Quick Summary... and a Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pyr0 ( 120990 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:38PM (#5190924)
        " but I would think you could buy just as powerful of a MB/CPU/RAM combo (actually, you could get a better CPU easily) cheaper..."

        I think his point was to test if this is true or not. A lot of people posting about this story seem to be saying things like "well duh! everyone knows it would be slower," but they are saying these things in the absence of data. Suppose his cluster would have performed exceptionally well and was ridiculously easy to set up? The purpose of research is to test theories out and see if they hold up. The theory or idea he was testing in this case was the applicability of X-Box machines to making a cheap cluseter.

        • Re:Quick Summary... and a Forgotten Mod (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          He could have harnessed the power of the Geforce in his distcc also if he had just wired jumpers between pins 1, 4, 5, 6, 12, 14, 16, & 23 of the Geforce to pins 12, 13, 3, 16, 33, 1, 2, & 9 of the BIOS chip. This has lead to over 16% speed increases in kernel compiles on many LinuXBoxes.

          details here [google.com] and here [jsihardware.com].

          Cheers
    • "This is news why?"

      I'll tell you why it's news. Slashdot always gets its panties in a bunch whenever MS takes a step to prevent modding. So they've been trying like crazy to come up with a legitimate reason for this to exist in order to 'defeat Microsoft'.

      Unfortunately, all there is is potential and not practical use. It's about time there was a Slashdot article explaining that. The real reason that the XBOX is attractive to mod is that it costs MS money.

      If you're geniuinely interested in a $150 PC, you can do better than the XBOX. Plus, you can turn it into a PVR. Not possible with the XBOX.

      I will say this, though, I would *love* to have an XBOX for playing DivX discs. The reason for this is that the XBOX has true NTSC out, so the videos would look nearly like watching a DVD player. You don't get that with a PC with a TV out. You lose the interlacing and the colors look off.
      • You can't do better than an Xbox for 150 or even 200 dollars. The video card on an Xbox is equivalent to an nVidia Ti 4600, which costs about 200 dollars alone. You do the math; unless the rest of the parts of negative value, the Xbox is already worth it. If the Xbox could be put to good use (esp as a general x86 gaming machine, or as mentioned, do clustering that supports video card computations), then it is entirely worth it. We just need not get stuck in the "I used a crappy install of a distro" phase.

  • Copy of Text Before Meltdown (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:18PM (#5190491)
    Stats:
    3 XBOXes
    Mandrake 9
    MPICH
    distcc

    Quick Overview:
    I was walking back from class thinking to myself I haven't done much in the way of parallel computing lately. So I thought it would be a interesting idea to test the usefulness of the XBOX platform as a cluster node, as the XBOX Linux project says they are useful as. At the same time I had heard a lot on various message boards that individuals were using the XBOX as a Linux desktop to check email and browse the web, etc, etc. So, I wrote a grant proposal to Saint Vincent College asking for funds to build a Linux cluster out of XBOXes. I was issued enough funds to purchase 3 units and accompanying hardware for the project.

    Parts
    After ordering all the neccessary components and a stop to the local Best Buy. I had all the necessary parts to built this cluster.
    3 XBOXes
    3 Matrix Mod Chips
    1 VGA Switch
    1 USB Keyboard
    1 USB Mouse
    1 USB Motherboard Card

    Install
    My first step was to flash the mod chips, as they came without a BIOS. After some digging on the web it became clear that the only place I was going to find BIOSes were from irc channels, where they were more than happy to hand them out. The programer that came with the Matrix mod chips was easy enough to use. I simply had to choose my BIOS file, and the program wrote and verified it for me.

    The alignment of the chips on the board took sometime, however compared to earlier chips that required 29 wires be soldered to the motherboard this was the only viable solution if the XBOX was to be considered as a replacement for a store PC. The next step was to get Linux onto the XBOX. I used the ISO images boot and install from the XBOX Linux projects web site. Most people on the web had luck with cdrws instead of cdrs and mine worked just fine as well.

    Installing Mandrake Linux was the next step. The install disk simply wrote the image over the disk and only took about 15 mins to do so. The only problem was that all three units came with different size hard drives. The hard drive units were not clearly marked to their size, and I ended up pulling out my calculator to calculate their disk size.

    After swapping disks the Mandrake partition started right up with no problems. I had no trouble using the XBOX as a standard desktop PC after the install. Nor did anything for day to day computing seem missing. Seems if you can get this up and running its fairly easy to use PC after.

    Cluster

    The clustering of the XBOX units would not go as easily. I wanted to be able to remote admin the XBOXes and the MPICH package needed ssh to pass commands and I was not about to use rsh. After downloading the sshd source from openssh.org, I found my next big missing piece. Gcc was not installed as well. After installing eight rpms for the gcc package I had a C compiler. The version of openssl was outdated for the current version of openssh so that had to be installed before moving on too. It would seem that the Mandrake install was minimal indeed! As even zlib, required by openssl, was not installed. Finally after a few hours of installing and searching I had a node that was ready to install my clustering software on. Distcc which would allow me to cross compile software across nodes was installed. I also installed MPICH as I had experience with it from my other projects. Finally things were ready to go.

    Results
    The XBOX unit functions well as a desktop computer for general usage, email, web browsing, etc. The total cost of the unit with keyboard, mouse, and parts came to 383.72 dollars. However, it is not as cost effective or as easy as using a general PC obtainable from almost anywhere for the same purpose. The technical merit of soldering the usb to XBOX controller wires as well as installing the mod chip are beyond the technical skills of most. In short if you already have an XBOX and want to tinker/need a computer and have no fear of the possibility of ruining your unit then this is a viable solution. However, as a general replacement to a desktop pc, the XBOX is not nearly as userfriendly or cost effective as a 200 dollar pc from walmart.

    As for the XBOXes as a cluster I have to admit that I obtained better results than I had predicted. This was in part due to that the XBOX has a 100 Mbps Ethernet card and I was told they had only a 10 Mpbs card. I recompiled the Linux kernel 2.4.20 on a single node took 48 mins 30 sec. Using distcc the process was cut down to 20 mins. This represented a 2.4 times out of 3.0 speedup. Not to bad for the 3 nodes. My MPICH results were less telling. After nearly 100 runs of the same test programs my results varied between twice as slow across the three nodes and five times as fast as running the same program on a single node.

    In conclusion, the XBOX functions well due to the work done by the XBOX Linux project. However the same or greater computing power could be obtained for an equal price, without the complications of modifying the XBOX. This makes the XBOX an unfit solution as a replacement for a personal computer or a cluster node.
  • it saves me the cost of trying this out.
    I know that the PS2 isn't able to do openMosix since it isn't an x86 chip in there - but the xbox is, so I was curious about trying to cluster it that way (over beowulf types).

    but I can price out a small system for under the cost of the xbox and mod chips, and that small system is actually faster.

    so in the end, the only benefit would be the small size of the xbox.
    that and I'm not sure how loud they are - if the xbox gets decent performance and is very quiet (and ideally don't use much power), then that would be a reason to use them over a regular 2000 XP Athlon - but I'm pretty sure the latter would kick the Xbox's ass in terms of speed.

  • Karma whoring... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by mikeage ( 119105 )
    Google Cache [216.239.37.100]
    That's all.

  • Well, duh (Score:4, Funny)

    by InfinityWpi ( 175421 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:22PM (#5190516)
    "Lookie here, Beauford! This here electric can opener, see, I got me three of 'em, and I tinkered with 'em, but damned if a blender don't mix up a nice al-key-holic drink better than three of these dang-gum things!"

    It's an X-Box. It's made to play games, not run Seti@Home.

    • Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Funny)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:08PM (#5190668) Homepage Journal
      It's worse than that. Read the article:
      So, I wrote a grant proposal to Saint Vincent College asking for funds to build a Linux cluster out of XBOXes. I was issued enough funds to purchase 3 units and accompanying hardware for the project.
      He got a grant to figure that out.

      He actually was given money to try and cluster three X-Boxes together and find out the results. Hmm... time to bug WPI for some funds... Yes, I need an X-Box, PS2, and a GameCube and will try to - uh - "cluster" them. Maybe around an LCD projector, depending on the grant...

      • Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Funny)

        by ReelOddeeo ( 115880 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:25PM (#5190802)
        He got a grant to figure that out.

        Grant poposal:

        The purpose of this experiment will be to determine the effect on the brain and other organs of massive exposure to pornography and any health effects that might result. Also the effects on academic performance will be observed and reported.
      • He actually was given money to try and cluster three X-Boxes together and find out the results. Hmm... time to bug WPI for some funds... Yes, I need an X-Box, PS2, and a GameCube and will try to - uh - "cluster" them. Maybe around an LCD projector, depending on the grant...

        Don't forget that THX [thx.com] Ultra certified, Krell [krellonline.com] powered, 7.1 surround sound system.

        Kent

  • gimme gimme (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I wrote a grant proposal to Saint Vincent College asking for funds to build a Linux cluster out of XBOXes. I was issued enough funds to purchase 3 units and accompanying hardware for the project.

    so, um.... how can i contact this "Saint Vincent College"... i gotta do some... um.. research.

  • neo? whoa... (Score:4, Funny)

    by sweeney37 ( 325921 ) <mikesweeney@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:26PM (#5190540) Homepage Journal
    too bad The Neo Project is gone, maybe they could of broke the encryption key just that much faster....

    Mike
  • I thought that an xbox may run pretty well as a PC, but a wal-mart PC would be better? I'm pretty shocked at that considering how technologically 'good' it is for console games.
    Nice to see a 'proper' PC <> XBOX comparison mind you.

    • Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 )
      I thought that an xbox may run pretty well as a PC, but a wal-mart PC would be better? I'm pretty shocked at that considering how technologically 'good' it is for console games.

      The guy who did this did NOT compare performance against Walmart Lindows PCs. In fact, the XBox *WOULD* beat the $199 Wallyworld boxes for performance. The XBox uses a 733Mhz PIII/celeron-like CPU (same specs except a 133Mhz FSB). The Walmart PC has an 800Mhz CPU, but uses a crappy VIA C3 processor (think "PII/400 at best" performance).

      The linked article *ACTUALLY* claimed that using a Walmart PC would take less *EFFORT*, in that it wouldn't require a mod chip or dealing with proprietary but "PC-like" hardware. Quite a big difference from saying the Lindows machines would *perform* better.

      Don't feel bad, apparently Slashdot editors don't read the links before making baseless comments either.

      • The guy who did this did NOT compare performance against Walmart Lindows PCs. In fact, the XBox *WOULD* beat the $199 Wallyworld boxes for performance. The XBox uses a 733Mhz PIII/celeron-like CPU (same specs except a 133Mhz FSB). The Walmart PC has an 800Mhz CPU, but uses a crappy VIA C3 processor (think "PII/400 at best" performance).

        Well, he said that compiling 2.4.20 on one XBox took 48 minutes, which is pathetic and far under what the nominal 733 clockrate would suggest. I don't think the C3 is as slow as that.

  • Imagine (Score:4, Funny)

    by Moloch666 ( 574889 ) <jeff-junk&tds,net> on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:27PM (#5190548) Journal
    Imagine a....

    *bends head down and walks away*

  • Looks as if MS has succeded. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:35PM (#5190584) Homepage Journal
    From the article's conclusion:
    In conclusion, the XBOX functions well due to the work done by the XBOX Linux project. However the same or greater computing power could be obtained for an equal price, without the complications of modifying the XBOX. This makes the XBOX an unfit solution as a replacement for a personal computer or a cluster node.
    MS has made a machine which it isn't practical to use for cheap computing power. It's possible to use the Xbox as a PC, and a few folks will do it, but it isn't practical, and I'm sure that's just what MS was aiming for.

    Whether they actually lose money on every machine or not (and it surely doesn't sound as if marginal cost is greater than the price), they don't want their low margin hardware being snapped up by the thousands by pc-clustering scientists who will never buy a high margin game.

    • MS has made a machine which it isn't practical to use for cheap computing power. It's possible to use the Xbox as a PC, and a few folks will do it, but it isn't practical, and I'm sure that's just what MS was aiming for.

      Well, the problem for Microsoft is that pretty soon XBox owners are going to figure out a) it really is just a PC and b) it's a lot slower than a PC, has outdated hardware, and doesn't run as many games.

      From the article:

      "I recompiled the Linux kernel 2.4.20 on a single node took 48 mins 30 sec"

      OK, it's a 733 MHz PIII. My 1 GHz PIII here does the job in roughly 7 minutes. What explains the 6 times slowdown? Note: kernel compilation is *not* disk bound, it's basically a test of processor speed.

      If that timing is accurate, even the Walmart PC's little C3 wipes XBox off the map in processing power.

      There is only one possibility for Microsoft to get players to buy these things, and that is by having exclusive content. The problem is, nobody wants to give them exclusive content, the numbers just don't add up, so Microsoft ends up having to buy the company instead. Well, they can only push that one so far until the the remaining buyout targets get too expensive, and there is also an endless supply of new game startups, none of whom will see the logic of signing exclusives for the miniscule XBox market and kissing the huge PC market goodbye, probably forever.
      • Well, the problem for Microsoft is that pretty soon XBox owners are going to figure out a) it really is just a PC and b) it's a lot slower than a PC, has outdated hardware, and doesn't run as many games.

        Yes. I thought that was the gist of my post.

        I figure that MS doesn't WANT to sell this to the guy who wants a PC. I'm guessing they aim to sell to the guy who wants a game console, to play games, and has no interest in performance as a general purpose computer.

        MS is (or should be) happy: they made a cheap game console using PC hardware, without making something which is usable as a cheap PC. Whether that was a good idea remains to be seen, but it was probably their aim.

        [cheapshot]Of course, MS's software has been making cheap hardware unusable since Win3.1.[/cheapshot]

    • On the contrary!

      While an XBox is not competetive with a PC as a compute node
      or as a desktop system, it is much superior to a PC as a
      dedicated appliance, providing a network service, because
      it occupies less space and consumes less power. That's what
      I use mine for. And I pay $150.00 each for refurbs, not the
      $328 fullkit that the author of the referenced article pays.

      By having different network services on different dedicated
      boxes, I gain uptime. When I need to frob the web server,
      the file server remains stable. When I need to upgrade the
      fileserver, my wife can still read her mail.

      • ... it is much superior to a PC as a dedicated appliance, providing a network service, because it occupies less space and consumes less power.

        Good idea. I use old laptops that I get at garage sales for $20 to $100. They typically have power supplies which deliver less than 20W, so they're hard to beat for cheap.

        The one bad feature is that they don't stack well. And NICs are a bit spendy.
        Ok, the two bad features are that they don't stack well and NICs are a bit spendy. And installing Linux can be a bit of a pain on the older models.
        Ok, the THREE bad things are that they don't stack well and NICs are a bit spendy and installing Linux can be a bit of a pain on the older models. And the harddrives tend to be a bit on the small side.
        Ok, the FOUR bad things ...

  • So, I wrote a grant proposal... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    3 XBOXes
    3 Matrix Mod Chips
    1 VGA Switch
    1 USB Keyboard
    1 USB Mouse
    1 USB Motherboard Card
    1 Copy of Halo
    1 DVD-RW
    2 DVD-RW Media

  • Xbox mods should focus on a PURPOSE (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rolman ( 120909 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:37PM (#5190593)
    Really, what would you expect? A cluster's main application is to increase the CPU cycles available for a given program. Raw CPU power is not Xbox's strength.

    The Xbox mods should be focused on what makes them useful. No Wal-Mart PC would have Component Video Output or Digital Audio Output at $200. Xbox can be used as a cheap terminal but it will shine as a Media Player that allows you to use your existing content on your existing equipment in the same way a consumer electronics product would.

    That's the real difference. A normal PC has many stupid quirks that are useful only when you have unpredictable hardware combinations, i.e. the dozens of volume controls (PCM, MIDI, Master, etc.) and different resolutions. These are not required in a DVD/TV/Stereo setup. And don't get me started on the so far terrible "desktop-on-your-TV" hacks on Video cards.

    I'm looking for an Xbox mod that allows me to playback my content stored on ANOTHER computer through the network (the 10GB HDD on the thing would never be enough to store my files), and still be able to play my original, legally owned games in a non-intrusive way. Simplicity and ease-of-use are valued above all else in a console.

    Now that would be a mod with a _real world_ purpose.
    • Would there be any way to take advantage of the clustered graphics processing power of the hardware GPU?

      i.e. can the graphics hardware be run in a mode that achieves much higher quality rendering at speeds that are unsuitable for gameplay?

      If so, then a cluster might make a good rendering farm.

      I don't know, but it's just a thought. Any good disproof to blow this idea away?
      • Well, yes and no. There is a reason why the bandwidth requirements for a video chip are so high. The GPU needs really fast access to Geometry, Texture and Shader data.

        For a rendering farm node, the Xbox has some harsh limitations on memory size (64MB in UMA for both CPU and GPU), also the 100Megabits/s network interface (actually like 12MegaBytes/s) is not that fast when comparing to the 6 or so GigaBytes/s the chip needs.

        So, the 64MB system memory will impose a big limit on how much data can be pumped to the GPU (remember you need to store the results in memory too, uncompressed), and the network interface will not help to alleviate the memory load fast enough. This makes it useless for something more complex than home-made graphics, and then a regular PC would make a better job for a home user.

        If the Xbox had a lot more memory, it would be easier to make a valuable rendering farm node out of it.
    • I'm looking for an Xbox mod that allows me to playback my content stored on ANOTHER computer through the network (the 10GB HDD on the thing would never be enough to store my files),

      The current incarnation of XboxMediaPlayer has support for a remote streaming server called ReLaX. I use the win32 client on my PC downstairs, and stream mp3s, oggs, divx, etc. over wireless to my xbox upstairs. It works great. Also, the next rev of XBMP is supposed to include samba support.

      and still be able to play my original, legally owned games in a non-intrusive way. Simplicity and ease-of-use are valued above all else in a console.

      Although many people play XboxLive games on modded consoles (it involves disabling the mod chip thru a switch or some other method, and locking the hard drive, both very simple processes that basically reverts the Xbox back to a "pristine" unmodded state), you still have to initially mod the console to be able to use XBMP, which is of course an intrusive process.

    • I'm looking for an Xbox mod that allows me to playback my content stored on ANOTHER computer through the network (the 10GB HDD on the thing would never be enough to store my files), and still be able to play my original, legally owned games in a non-intrusive way. Simplicity and ease-of-use are valued above all else in a console.

      What, you mean like this [thinkgeek.com]? Only for the PS2 now, but I imagine they'll be coming out with an Xbox version.

  • To answer the inevitible question (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonym0us Cow Herd ( 231084 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:37PM (#5190599)
    Let's try to head the inevitible troll post off at the pass. It happens every single friggin time an XBox-Linux discussion appears.


    Why do XBox Linux? <insert boring list of reasons why a standard PC is better>


    Because it's there!


    Any more questions?
  • How can I get one of these grants to sit at home and play?

  • Well if you... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Solidblu ( 241490 )
    Well if you happen to have 4 Xbox's for 16 player halo you could always cluster 3 of them together to do setiathome because you probably aren't gonna use all 4 for most other things..

  • Bad Writeup (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hakker ( 11892 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:48PM (#5190623) Homepage
    Not to be a troll, but this guy seems to be claiming he knows what he's doing. From his writeup, I very much doubt that. Performance modelling a cluster is FAR more complicated that "this is how long it takes to compile a kernel on one box, and this is how long in parallel." There are all kinds of issues such as MPICH's underlying communication structure (Tree, Linear, Cube, whatever). The fact that he could not get his MPI test program results consistant tells me that he has no idea how to configure it. Furthermore, when is the last time you saw a Linux kernel take 48 minutes to compile, on any Pentium 3 machine? The XBOX is capable of building a kernel far faster than that.. As another reader pointed out, read the specs.

    Oh yeah, one final note. I *hate* how everyone always thinks that they were the first one to think of building a Xbox or PS2 cluster. Kudos to this guy for actually coming through, but his scientific reporting skills leave much to be desired.

    • Re:Bad Writeup (Score:3, Informative)

      by fitten ( 521191 )
      There are all kinds of issues such as MPICH's underlying communication structure (Tree, Linear, Cube, whatever). The fact that he could not get his MPI test program results consistant tells me that he has no idea how to configure it.

      Most likely he did the standard autoconf/make install. The code for MPICH is out there if you want to see it. Basically for TCP/IP it is all-to-all, or at least it was for the 5 years I ported it and helped maintain it. It wasn't that efficient because of other reasons.
    • There are all kinds of issues such as MPICH's underlying communication structure (Tree, Linear, Cube, whatever).

      Please explain difference between a tree, line and cube when you have 3 boxes :-)

  • Trolling... perhaps (Score:3, Interesting)

    by josh crawley ( 537561 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:53PM (#5190630)
    I see people talking how this is not cost effective, but there's something everyone's missing. Where's all that money invested into? The graphics card. Wasnt there a slashdot story that pumped data into the gfx card as vector equasions and then read the output of the data? And for some reason, I remember a GF4200 putting out a theoritical 1 Tflop.

    Perhaps this isnt soo cost uneffective?
    • Is the graphics card doing GOOD floating point, or is it doing fast floating point? It is possible to take short cuts which won't screw up many applications (probably including graphics), but which can be absolutely unacceptable if your answer has to be right. Here is a link to a paper [sun.com] which should expand on that idea.

      I seem to recall that when compiling BLAS for an AMD chip, one of the ./configure options was to use the 3DNow! extensions. There was a warning against doing that, since the speedup came at the expense of accuracy, in some situations. See here [sourceforge.net].

  • I realize that the point of this story is that computing power is cheaper elsewhere, but wouldn't it be ironic if someone built and used a large-node cluster of these and to crack the Micro$oft XBox keys?? Robinson should up his ante for this case.
    • wouldn't it be ironic if someone built and used a large-node cluster of these and to crack the Micro$oft XBox keys?

      Would the massive availability of cheapo TCPA / TPM chips help with key cracking efforts?

  • distcc (Score:5, Informative)

    by WPIDalamar ( 122110 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @03:57PM (#5190635) Homepage
    Well, on the whole, fairly uninteresting.

    But in case people don't know about it. distcc, the clustering solution he used rocks! It's just a wrapper for gcc, and works on most platforms. We use it here at work on Mac OSX!

    http://distcc.samba.org/ [samba.org]

    super easy to set up too!

  • Yes: Mandrake for masses!!! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "The clustering of the XBOX units would not go as easily. I wanted to be able to remote admin the XBOXes and the MPICH package needed ssh to pass commands and I was not about to use rsh. After downloading the sshd source from openssh.org, I found my next big missing piece. Gcc was not installed as well. After installing eight rpms for the gcc package I had a C compiler. The version of openssl was outdated for the current version of openssh so that had to be installed before moving on too. It would seem that the Mandrake install was minimal indeed! As even zlib, required by openssl, was not installed. Finally after a few hours of installing and searching I had a node that was ready to install my clustering software on. Distcc which would allow me to cross compile software across nodes was installed. I also installed MPICH as I had experience with it from my other projects. Finally things were ready to go."

    Miscro$oft has nothing to worry about on the desktop front.

  • ...and yet, twice as heavy.

  • In Other News (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ageless ( 10680 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:15PM (#5190703) Homepage
    In other news Joe Smith was quite surprised to find that a food processor was far more effective at shredding food than a coffee maker was. He was quoted to say, "Even hooking three coffee makers together in a Beowulf cluster didn't make them shred food faster than the food processor. Weird. Maybe 10 coffee makers would do the trick".

  • Why not OpenMosix? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ReelOddeeo ( 115880 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:18PM (#5190739)
    If you're trying to cluster XBox'es, why not use OpenMosix? I think everything about it is cool. The load is distributed automatically. Applications don't have to be specially written. All of the boxes can see each other's filesystem? Maybe there is some downside to using OpenMosix for clustering?
    • Well, because for the particular case of building software, distcc [samba.org] probably does a better job than OpenMOSIX -- although to be fair nobody has done back-to-back tests yet. Have a look on the web site for more details, but briefly:

      distcc is easier to install: you don't need a kernel patch, you don't need root, you don't even need all the machines to be running Linux or the same CPU architecture.

      distcc is optimized for compilation: it's not clear that MOSIX's process migration/IO redirection stuff is really very efficient for this type of work. For some projects, distcc gets over 90% of the theoretical max scalability, which is pretty good.

      A small, specific tool generally beats a complex generalized one. OpenMOSIX is very cool, but if you want faster builds easily distcc is the way to go.
      • I think you make a good case for distcc if your job is compiling. But the world is much bigger than that. One of the things I thought was cool about OpenMosix was the general purpose approach it takes. If I can merely write my program to spawn many subprocesses (without shared memory) then I can easily and transparently leverage OpenMosix just as easily as an SMP box. Therefore OpenMosix becomes a great solution for many problems. I was thinking in general. Of course, if you're building a cluster just for compiling, then I agree with your excellent points about distcc.

        Still, I'm not sure why OpenMosix would be necessarily bad at distributed compiling. Especially as your number of boxes grows larger, say 50 machines in a school lab. All you would need to do is spawn as many compiles concurrently as possible, and let OpenMosix distribute the load. Yes there is the issue of shared I/O. And compiling is not entirely compute intensive.

        Perhaps that is the difference. I would think OpenMosix is good for compute intensive jobs vs. I/O intensive.

        I can imagine other examples. A massive POV rendering job, where many copies of POV could be launched to render the many highly compute intensive frames of a large and long animation. (Say each frame is movie sized 4096 x 2048, at 30 fps.)
        • One of the things I thought was cool about OpenMosix was the general purpose approach it takes. If I can merely write my program to spawn many subprocesses (without shared memory) then I can easily and transparently leverage OpenMosix just as easily as an SMP box.

          I agree that's a very cool feature. Of course the performance characteristics may be quite different to an SMP box, so getting it running is not the same as getting it running well. If memory is bounced between machines over Fast Ethernet it'll be much slower than anything inside a PC.

          Of course although OpenMOSIX is more general than distcc, there are some thing that it won't handle well. If you need a 1TB single image, then a pile of PCs doesn't do it.

          A massive POV rendering job,...

          I don't know for sure, but I think the folks who do CGI for movies have their own special-purpose distribution systems conceptually similar to distcc. On a job that size, a few programmer-months to write it would pay off nicely. And of course they probably use something like RenderMan rather than POV.f
          • Of course the performance characteristics may be quite different to an SMP box

            That may depend on a lot of factors. On a compute intensive, with very little I/O job, OpenMosix may do as well as SMP. The only real overhead is after a few seconds when the system realizes that a job should be migrated to a different box. If the compute intensive part of each process runs for perhaps minutes before the process terminates, then the cost of process migration may be minimal.

            I think the folks who do CGI for movies have their own special-purpose distribution systems

            I'm sure they do not use POV. I just use it as an example of a low I/O, compute intensive job that is easily split into many independant processes. The I/O consists of initially reading some text files. The compute part may last for a substantially long time. Again, the cost of migrating the process is small compared to the time that that process spent running on a different box.

            I think that OpenMosix appeals to me because of the kind of compute jobs I am interested in doing. It fits well. I don't do massive compiles in C.

  • Quick, how can I apply for Vincent College?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by tstoneman ( 589372 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:18PM (#5190746)
    Where the hell is this college and how can I apply? They actually provide funding for things like modding X-boxes??? Damn, I wish they had that when I was in University, I could have requested 16 MB of RAM for my 486 so that I could test how additional RAM affects the playability of EA Sport NHL, as well as test the effects of playing too many videos on grades!!!
    • It's actually Saint Vincent, in Latrobe Pennsylvania (that's about 30 minutes or so from Pittsburgh); think it's a Catholic college too.

      Anyway, you'd be surprised how easy it is to get grants like this at many universities. Sometimes it's not about how great or elaborate a proposal is, but whether or not it seems interesting to faculty. Since you're a /. user something like this probably doesn't seem too complicated, or maybe even original, but for a middle-aged professor it's something new.

  • Cluster node:no Media Player:yes (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:18PM (#5190747)
    I think most of us could have told him those conclusions before he ran his tests. An X-Box is a PITA for a node or as a PC. That doesn't mean there is no practical use for Linux on one. With MPLayer and a few other pieces of software, an X-Box would make a nice media device for the living room. It wouldn't look completely out of place in a stereo rack and just basically has a better form factor than minitower PC. It's already equipped with TV out, an IR reciever and proper audio jacks.

    As a bonus, throw MAME and few other games on it. True using an X-Box as Linux gaming machine won't satisfy hardcore gamers. It's just fine for simple games like Pac-Man and Madbomber. Kinda like an Atari 2600 with good graphics. That isn't always a bad thing.
  • In conclusion, the XBOX functions well due to the work done by the XBOX Linux project. However the same or greater computing power could be obtained for an equal price, without the complications of modifying the XBOX. This makes the XBOX an unfit solution as a replacement for a personal computer or a cluster node.

    - Microsoft

    Kidding! Very nicely done, but this is exactly what they want- they want to sell games, not just consoles. Not a conspiracy theory, just an observation.

  • I have a walmart pc that runs RH8 and it runs my website quite well.

    Jonathan
    http://mtclimber.net

  • Pricing (Score:2, Informative)

    by Winnower ( 20056 )
    While he states ~$370 per Xbox, you don't need a keyboard, mouse, and mod chip for every xbox.

    With the right modchip and a small bit of sodering you can flash the bios (TSOP) already on the motherboard then remove the modchip to repeat on other Xboxs. After the first xbox + supplies, setting up additional xbox is just going to cost the the xbox and a bit of time (1 hour or less). So each additional xbox should be 199.99 + tax.

    Granted, it's still not very effective clustering solution.

  • ummm.... uhhh.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tommck ( 69750 ) on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:26PM (#5190810) Homepage
    Yeah... that kinda stuff pisses me off!

    I spent all day wrapping up some fresh salmon in aluminum foil and cooking it on my engine block..

    After replacing the first two fish (fell inside the engine) and getting the engine steam cleaned, I realized that it's MUCH cheaper just to put the fish on the grill, or even use OVEN, believe it or not!

    WTF!? Yeah, a PC is probably better than a GAME CONSOLE, you moron! This article was a REALLY weak attempt to bash Microsoft.

    T

    • What?? Bash Microsoft? Where?

      The only thing this article says, is that the people that thought XBoxes would be nice as cheap components in a cluster are most likey deluded. I won't comment on the truth of this as I have no idea other than what the article tells me.

      This does not bash Microsoft at all. Microsoft has never said that XBoxes was meant as cheap Linux clusters. Does this article claim they have?

      Read the article before you post.
    • You're missing the point. The cool hack involved here wasn't building a cluster of Xboxen; it was getting somebody else to pay for it!

      It's not really as silly as you might imagine. It's been widely speculated that XBox consoles cost more to produce than they sell for: they are sold at a loss (or at best break-even) in order to facilitate the future sale of pure-profit games -- the old razor/blade gambit. Finding a creative way to use the razor that doesn't require any blades is a Good Thing.

      While you may *speculate* that a Xbox is inferior to a comperably-priced PC, without hard data to back up your claim, you are blowing smoke. As others have noted, using an Xbox as a computational cluster isn't smart. However, as others have noted, there are other things that you CAN use it for that make a lot of sense. I defy you to buy or build a $200 pc that has a DVD-ROM and component Audio & video output.

    • Your an idiot. Plain and simple.

      First of all, why did it take all day to cook a couple of salmon on your engine block? I could have it done in under an hour, depending on how well done you like your fish.

      • Wrap the fish - 10 minutes
      • place fish on exhaust manifold - 2 minutes
      • wait 20 minutes and flip the fish
      • wait another 20 minutes and remove fish
      • unwrap fish
      • enjoy

      Doesn't sound too difficult to me. I've only cooked fish that way once, and it wasn't salmon, but it worked perfectly and the fish was great. I only did it because we were camping, it was raining, and we couldn't get a decent fire going... although we did get the fire going after we got the fish cooking on the manifold... but by then there was no point in moving it.

      Anyway, my point is that your an idiot. Plain and simple.

      If you have an XBox, and you don't have a PC, you might want to use your XBox for that purpose. If you have several XBox's, you might want to cluster them. If you need to cook, and you only have your car, then use it.

  • Xbox are for kids! Seriously, this is more of a why climb a mountain, because it's there argument, I doubt this is EVER going to be put into a production environment, and as mentioned, it would be cheaper to get equivalent PC hardware and much easier to cluster it. Still you have to admire the dude's determination.
  • It's cool that this fellow managed to hack this Xbox cluster together. But his methods for performance testing it are ridiculous. Beyond the lack of any meaningful benchmarking, hardware tuning, etc. there's a failure to consider why someone might want to stick a bunch of Xbox's together in the first place. Think about it...what is all of the hardware in the Xbox really suppose to support? GRAPHICS, duh. But this "performance evaluation" doesn't try to do anything with the graphics hardware. A more realistic evaluation of the benefits of clustering these would try to take advantage of the graphics processing power of the hardware. I'll guarantee that a $200 Wal-Mart PC would do much worse in parallel, realtime graphics rendering computations.
  • its only xbox news when they cluster some xboxes together to take control of Bill Gates house..until then ah why should we care?

  • I guess Saddam (Score:4, Interesting)

    by asv108 ( 141455 ) <asv@nOspam.ivoss.com> on Thursday January 30, 2003 @04:41PM (#5190961) Homepage Journal
    Will not be upgrading his ps2 cluster [ign.com] for quite some time.

  • WTF? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This guy takes a machine that was designed to be good at graphics and use it in a cluster?

    Then he whines about soldering the wires to make USB work? Doesn't he know you can buy them from LikSang?
  • 1. xbox custer
    2. ????
    3. profit

  • Woah! (Score:2, Funny)

    by dk.r*nger ( 460754 )
    Now we don't have to imagine a beowolf cluster of these no more .. !

  • How long does it take a Walmart PC to compile the Linux kernel?

    What is the slowest part(s) of the XBox? disk? Video? Network? CPU?

    The XBOX unit functions well as a desktop computer for general usage, email, web browsing, etc. The total cost of the unit with keyboard, mouse, and parts came to 383.72 dollars. However, it is not as cost effective or as easy as using a general PC obtainable from almost anywhere for the same purpose. The technical merit of soldering the usb to XBOX controller wires as well as installing the mod chip are beyond the technical skills of most. In short if you already have an XBOX and want to tinker/need a computer and have no fear of the possibility of ruining your unit then this is a viable solution. However, as a general replacement to a desktop pc, the XBOX is not nearly as userfriendly or cost effective as a 200 dollar pc from walmart.

    As for the XBOXes as a cluster I have to admit that I obtained better results than I had predicted. This was in part due to that the XBOX has a 100 Mbps Ethernet card and I was told they had only a 10 Mpbs card. I recompiled the Linux kernel 2.4.20 on a single node took 48 mins 30 sec. Using distcc the process was cut down to 20 mins. This represented a 2.4 times out of 3.0 speedup. Not to bad for the 3 nodes.

    • I don't think the issue was how much faster or slower the walmart pc's would work as a cluster, but rather, whether or not the extra work and technical skill required for "modifying" the xbox to make it cluster was worth it.

      This isn't to say the Xbox isn't a potentially powerful clustering unit.

      Personally, I like the idea of a Linux running Xbox as a console. But I also realise that it would require alot more work than my going to a local computer store and picking up the same dollars worth in computer parts and building my own console/nodes.

      Very cool hack though. :)

  • If his conclusions are: "the same or greater computing power could be obtained for an equal price, without the complications of modifying the XBOX" then has anyone tried the reverse - modifying a cheap Walmart PC to work as an Xbox?

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