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The PS2 client that has just been released is so slow it's not worth it:
Link: http://playstation2-linux.com/forum/...p?msg_id=31089Quote:
Run it for over an hour and the results are less than impressive...
per second: 0.05
per minute: 2.90
per Hour: 174.04
per Day: 4176.96
ouch!
i have run DF on a pentium 200 w/32MB RAM and i am quite sure it was faster than that
what kind of cpu does a ps2 run?
I'm wondering if something else is an issue here. Certainly an optimized version should be faster. I believe that the chips used is a mips at 300 mhz, the idea is its effectively faster than its clock speed.
http://members.aol.com/maxnolte/vs.htm
shows some PlayStation and XBOX stats
.. Im thinkin we need an XBOX version....
the PS2 doesn't use any chip that many people can properly code for. it's an integrated chipset, combining all instructions under one chip, rather than having a CPU and a GPU seperate(like the xbox)
a PS2 client would probably run very fast, but you'd need an expert coder to properly utilize the chip. even teams like the ones at capcom (which have used the emotion engine since before the launch of the PS2) are still learning new tricks and tips from the guy's at Sony.
and Xbox chip on the other hand, would be very easy to code for. it's CPU is a Pentium 3, and it's GPU is a Geforece3. it would probably be a simple matter of porting it.
But here's the problem. you could not use Xbox-live to export the workloads, and from what i understand the network interface isn't easy to use. you'd have to make a really nifty little proxy, and hook your Xbox up to a network hub (not just another PC) to get the work off of it.
Before doing any big coding, i recomend finding out how many people actually could use this properly. i doubt there are many with the proper networks, AND and xbox they're willing to devote to a Dist project.
all in all though, a worthy project to look at, for the future.
IMO, the most needed version is one that can run on HP printers. These things usually have quite capable RISC processors in them and are mostly idle. Breaks my heart :D
It had to be tried, but indeed I was disappointed with the relatively poor performance of the PS2. It is just built the the standard gcc 2.95 that comes with it, with standard compiler optimization flags. I suppose most of the CPUs power is in doing 3D graphics and vector geometry, and that's just not where our program bottlenecks.
Nevertheless, if you have a PS2 Linux box just lying around...
Many people have Xboxs, and most people just use them to play games for only several hours, so the sit around collecting dust the rest of the time. I would be willing to let a project run on my Xbox.
I personally would be scared to run a DC project on my Ps2 or xbox the way those things die!!
The main problem with XBOX is you cannot put Linux (or other software) on a box that is not 'modded' (and thus illegal). To develop legal software you must use the Xbox SDK which requires Microsoft's 'blessing'. Needless to say, we don't have the latter...