[Noisebridge-discuss] hashclash MD5 collisions, and ps3 for Noisebridge

[Andy Isaacson]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 06:35:16PM -0700, d p chang wrote:
> btw, grovelling around on ebay found this
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-Mercury-QS20-blade-CELL-broadband-engine-processor_W0QQitemZ140327792528QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCOMP_EN_Servers?hash=item20ac302f90&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12%7C66%3A2%7C39%3A1%7C72%3A1205%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50
> 
> i have no idea what sorts of infrastructure one would need for a
> 'blade', but i think it compares w/ what the ps3 comes w/.

The CPU is the same architecture, athough the PS3 has only 6 SPEs
enabled while the QS20 has all 8 enabled.  There may also be a clock
speed difference.  The QS20 is a dual-CPU system so each node has 2 PPEs
and 16 SPEs total, whereas the PS3 is single-CPU so 1 PPE and 6 SPEs.

The QS20 requires a IBM BladeCenter chassis.  Those seem to be pretty
expensive on the resale market, around $1200 was the cheapest I found,
but it's the sort of thing that is hard to resell so we may be able to
find one hanging around somewhere just waiting to be donated.

It might be possible to hack the Blade connector, but doing so is not
trivial and means that the system is less flexible / capable.

I haven't found power/heat numbers on the QS20.

-andy