odd thing is, i wonder if they know the new ones dont load linux anymore or are they buying up old stock direct from Sony?
While the IBM Cell processor in the PS3 is pretty leet I can not see the point of building a supercomputer from it. I am certain that the a cluster of quadcore Xeon computers equipped with 4x5850/5870 graphics cards in each would give a far more awesome processing power for same cost as buying 2200PS3's With more n more programs supporting GPU's handling calculations and some of the higher ATi models having over 1600cores per card the output in processing power is simply amazing.
partially cost, but also the PS3/cell is desgined for parallel processing. the SDK has the tools which you'd have to develop from scratch for intel. are the tools for harnessing the GPU cores in general purpose roles mature enough yet, compared to years of cell development? other practicalities too, such as cooling, quad Xeon are rather hungary and they'd have to design a board to cope with such a configuration (servers dont usually have PCIx) and so on. then theres the point they are expanding an existing system, if starting from scratch today they might well go down the GPU route.
Prolly more likely that they just want to have a LAN party than making a "supercomputer" out of these.
