Scientific Computation on Playstation 2: Building a Cluster

"The NCSA has constructed a Playstation 2 Linux cluster as a test bench for scientific computation on "toy" hardware. The cluster consists of 65 compute nodes, 4 user login and development nodes, and 1 prototype node for software installation tests. All the nodes run the Sony Linux distribution for Playstation 2..."

The main entry point for the site is Scientific Computing on the Sony Playstation 2:

"The National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Computer Science department at the University of Illinois are exploring the use of the Sony Playstation 2 game console for scientific computing and high-resolution visualization. The PS2's Emotion Engine CPU has two "vector units" that are designed to manipulate 3-D polygon graphics for gaming. Sony's Linux Kit (for Playstation 2) provides programmers direct access to the vector units in the CPU, allowing them to be used for these non-graphics tasks..."