I think it was PS3 that shipped with “Other OS” functionality, and were sold a little cheaper than production costs would indicate, to make it up on games.
Only thing is, a bunch of institutions discovered you could order a pallet of PS3’s, set up Linux, and have a pretty skookum cluster for cheap.
I’m pretty sure Sony dropped “Other OS” not because of vague concerns of piracy, but because they were effectively subsidizing supercomputers.
Don’t know if any of those PS3 clusters made it onto Top500.
Makes me think how PS2 had export restrictions because “its graphics chip is sufficiently powerful to control missiles equipped with terrain reading navigation systems”
Wha?
(searches interwebs)
Wow, that completely passed me by…
I think it was PS3 that shipped with “Other OS” functionality, and were sold a little cheaper than production costs would indicate, to make it up on games.
Only thing is, a bunch of institutions discovered you could order a pallet of PS3’s, set up Linux, and have a pretty skookum cluster for cheap.
I’m pretty sure Sony dropped “Other OS” not because of vague concerns of piracy, but because they were effectively subsidizing supercomputers.
Don’t know if any of those PS3 clusters made it onto Top500.
Makes me think how PS2 had export restrictions because “its graphics chip is sufficiently powerful to control missiles equipped with terrain reading navigation systems”