This message is from Focus on Linux. It was forwarded to you by DESCASA. You can view it in the context of the entire discussion by going to: http://forums.about.com/ab-linux/messages/?msg=751.1 ======== DESCASA says to you ======== Not to be taken seriously. =======================Forwarded Message======================= Forum: the Focus on Linux Forum Subject: the Furbeowulf Project From: Trygve Lode (TRYGVELODE) To: (ALL) DateTime: 5/1/2001 12:52:27 PM The Furbeowulf Project hopes to set new records for the lowest cost-per-CPU-cycle through the use of massively parallelized commodity consumer computing devices found at Wal-Mart. (Furbys, Tamagotchis, Aibo, etc.) Fierce competition in the lucrative "High-Tech Toy" market has resulted in the introduction of increasingly sophisticated and powerful electronic toys at a reasonable cost. Though designed around dedicated embedded applications, the porting of more flexible operating systems to these platforms (e.g., Furby Linux, Solaris 8 / Aibo Platform Edition) has opened the doors to their use as general-purpose computing devices. Limitations on drive space and/or memory and the often restrictive user interface options on these platforms presents a problem for most desktop applications (e.g., spreadsheets, graphic design) but is a much lesser hindrance for the back-end CPU-intensive applications typical of cluster computing. [http://www.trygve.com/furbeowulf.html] The Furbeowulf project focused primarily on the Furby, not only because of the possibilities suggested by their built-in sensory features, optical networking support, and speech synthesis capabilities, but also because they were on sale. No benchmarks or formal performance analyses have been completed at this time because, though the experimental Furbeowulf cluster is capable of solving computationally complex problems quickly, no one has been able to understand the results. Trygve Lode www.trygve.com _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
