The AnandTech Linux XBOX PC Experiment
by Kristopher Kubicki on November 10, 2004 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Distributed Hashing
As far as distributed computing goes, distributed hashing has always been one of the original uses of a distributed network. A novelty to some, a necessity to others, hashing a lot of keys takes a very, very long time depending on the algorithm. Hashing keys does not require as much memory as rendering or compiling, which will probably work well for the XBOX cluster. Below, you can see a quick print-out of how fast OpenSSL works on a single node of our XBOX cluster, in comparison to the Sempron 2200+ machine mentioned earlier.XBOX
OpenSSL 0.9.7c 30 Sep 2003
built on: Mon Feb 23 18:18:12 GMT 2004
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx)
compiler: cc
available timing options: USE_TOD HZ=128 [sysconf value]
timing function used: getrusage
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 8 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
md2 557.47k 1546.09k 2091.52k 2292.74k 2362.03k
mdc2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
md4 9312.01k 50638.08k 104728.32k 143168.85k 160380.25k
md5 3405.55k 15094.19k 25995.73k 31601.87k 33746.11k
hmac(md5) 1456.18k 8698.11k 19730.66k 28729.00k 33202.18k
sha1 3989.46k 15676.20k 27201.45k 33287.51k 35621.55k
rmd160 2942.53k 12834.88k 21769.13k 26220.89k 27904.68k
rc4 42422.11k 56691.63k 59720.45k 60751.63k 60867.38k
des cbc 7463.69k 8229.14k 8364.52k 8364.03k 8366.76k
des ede3 2861.27k 2966.78k 2985.30k 2990.08k 2990.08k
idea cbc 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
rc2 cbc 5796.07k 6218.69k 6275.93k 6291.11k 6313.30k
rc5-32/12 cbc 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
blowfish cbc 16639.31k 20924.97k 21380.52k 21482.50k 21570.44k
cast cbc 12566.61k 14372.20k 14635.41k 14653.44k 14666.41k
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.0035s 0.0003s 286.7 3299.3
rsa 1024 bits 0.0195s 0.0010s 51.2 1049.0
rsa 2048 bits 0.1167s 0.0032s 8.6 314.0
rsa 4096 bits 0.7650s 0.0111s 1.3 90.3
sign verify sign/s verify/s
dsa 512 bits 0.0032s 0.0039s 313.5 259.5
dsa 1024 bits 0.0097s 0.0120s 103.3 83.4
dsa 2048 bits 0.0317s 0.0389s 31.6 25.7
OpenSSL>
Sempron 2200+
OpenSSL 0.9.7c 30 Sep 2003
built on: Mon Feb 23 18:18:12 GMT 2004
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx)
compiler: cc
available timing options: USE_TOD HZ=128 [sysconf value]
timing function used: getrusage
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
md2 1307.26k 2797.72k 3917.72k 4364.70k 4511.21k
mdc2 3019.04k 3408.81k 3522.52k 3549.56k 3565.32k
md4 11304.80k 39934.94k 117963.41k 229924.63k 318395.57k
md5 8789.64k 29747.05k 81595.00k 144216.44k 185556.36k
hmac(md5) 5081.28k 18230.65k 57049.28k 121655.26k 181687.44k
sha1 8715.38k 26775.46k 63727.77k 97333.12k 115140.36k
rmd160 7386.51k 21200.32k 45464.16k 64026.54k 72683.38k
rc4 88866.45k 94630.03k 96065.66k 96649.60k 97376.13k
des cbc 18098.33k 18586.49k 18717.35k 18809.36k 18772.63k
des ede3 6551.90k 6620.66k 6660.51k 6666.11k 6667.71k
idea cbc 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
rc2 cbc 15875.50k 16446.24k 16598.92k 16634.42k 16655.25k
rc5-32/12 cbc 73740.31k 88512.81k 92535.12k 94040.06k 94410.97k
blowfish cbc 44137.47k 48594.05k 49798.41k 50179.96k 50288.17k
cast cbc 30171.40k 32328.70k 32877.09k 33049.36k 33011.88k
aes-128 cbc 37067.76k 37903.95k 38377.07k 38499.61k 38531.59k
aes-192 cbc 32505.08k 33104.00k 33376.89k 33556.62k 33580.99k
aes-256 cbc 28702.51k 29251.51k 29532.40k 29604.97k 29624.04k
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 512 bits 0.0014s 0.0001s 702.7 8190.2
rsa 1024 bits 0.0074s 0.0004s 135.4 2648.0
rsa 2048 bits 0.0452s 0.0013s 22.1 798.2
rsa 4096 bits 0.2956s 0.0042s 3.4 236.2
sign verify sign/s verify/s
dsa 512 bits 0.0012s 0.0015s 820.1 653.8
dsa 1024 bits 0.0038s 0.0048s 266.1 209.8
dsa 2048 bits 0.0122s 0.0152s 81.8 65.6
OpenSSL>
Our hopes of making this XBOX distributed cluster thing worthwhile experiment are slowly diminishing. Again, we aren't out to break any speed records here, but we would love to see some XBOXes scale well. As another point of reference, our Opteron 150 machine can sign about 1063 RSA 1024 keys per second (in a 64-bit environment); that's approximately 20 times faster than what the XBOX is capable of.
The XBOX is very slow, but having a whole lot of them might scale well. We look to one of our favorite programs, John the Ripper, for more advice. Distrubuted John, or djohn, behaves similarly to make, assigning a different portion of the total keyspace to each machine. Djohn scales extremely linearly, since code cracking times are very long and there are very few places for network latency to interfere with our hashing. Since it takes basically the same amount of computing power to hash the same length key with a different character set, our total password cracking power is equal to N times the password cracking power of one machine, where N is the number of machines in the cluster (assuming the machines are all the same speed). You can see below how various machines performed JTR benchmark tests. JTR was compiled with GCC 3.3.3 with only MMX optimizations.
![Distributed John the Ripper 1.6.37 - DES [64/64 BS]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/xbox linux_11090471158/5374.png)
![Distributed John the Ripper 1.6.37 - MD5 [32/32]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/xbox linux_11090471158/5378.png)
![Distributed John the Ripper 1.6.37 - Blowfish (x32) [32/64]](https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/xbox linux_11090471158/5379.png)
A star denotes estimated performance. Our eight-way cluster fares pretty well against its workstation competition, but properly manipulating the compile options could tilt the results in any configuration's favor. Also keep in mind that 64-bit compilations of JTR yield up to 20% performance boosts as well on Blowfish, and we get those performance benefits from the x86 platform on which the XBOXes run. Cracking keys shows some immediate promise on our XBOX cluster, but looks to be the only real application.
Not to give the XBOX too much credit here, the puny Sempron performs much better at Blowfish and MD5 hashing. Building an equivalent cluster of Sempron machines would yield more than double the crunching power on Blowfish, and even more on MD5.
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Nepsir - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
I was just wondering if you will do a test with mental ray on the cluster (I think you mentioned something about Mental Ray in the article). It would be really interesting to see the results of that since me and a couple of friends got modded X-Boxes and I have a 3dsMax6 license (Mental Ray is included).gibson042 - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
You might want to look at the "mini-cluster" project (http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/cluster/) when planning/designing/building your EPIA cluster. It's a 12-node (originally 6) cluster developed by Glen Gardner, and appears to be the same size or a little smaller than a stack of an equal number of XBOXes. Of course, the frame is custom built and the hardware is exposed to the world.Aikouka - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
I can say that I love having a modded xbox, because the capabilities are so much greater. As discussed earlier, a software mod can be a great way to do it (although it usually requires a game unless you want to take your HDD out, which is NOT a fun method unless you love swapping IDE cables.)It's also good to note that you should be careful when modding these or even make a backup of the hdd on your system, because things can go wrong, and if you like to fiddle with things, then your chances will be a lot higher. I know at one point I was stuck in error 16 and had to pull the HDD out and unlock it using the IDE swap method.
Are there plans for an article on modding something such as the PS2? I just recently tried a no-solder modchip in the PS2, and it doesn't seem to be going along too well. Maybe it's time for a flip-top.
Scarceas - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
"We crimped our own cabling as you can see in the image below."I'm still looking for the image, I know its there somewhere!
bleugh - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
If anyone wants their xbox motherboards upgraded to 128 megabytes of memory, I can do itI'm UK based and use BRAND NEW samsung memory chips
I can upgrade your existing motherboards, sell you ready upgraded boards, or even just the chips!
if one of the anandtech team wants their xboxes upgraded i'll happily do it at cost, please contact me to discuss
Dean
LotoBak - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
First, XBox live banning....Basically this is how it used to work. When your on live it does a hash of your bios. A mod replaces your bios. If you bios is not the retail ms bios the serial (eeprom) is blacklisted. NOW since halo2 has been released it appears that MS has changed a while bunch of shit on us. Preliminary information indicates that MS is banning by hard drive serial+model numbers, xbox serial, and flagging the gamertag as 'potential pirate'. Thus to unban the xbox both a new hdd and eeprom are needed. Then you must cancel and create a new xbox live account. There are more details about how it all works but bottom line is we dont know how it works now. They can throw new stuff at us anytime now. Rumors are flying that hdd capacities are being scanned as well. For all intents and perposes xbox + modded xbox's do not mix.
Yes there is a PS1 emu for xbox. That said xbox DVD drives do not read cd-r (or retail ps1 games) Therefor all games must be transfered to the xbox hdd in bin/cue or iso format
When comparing mods remember, the mod contains no modded bios stuff. They are useless in them selves. You will need to aquire a modded bios for your xbox (online, free). What this means is that every mod can contain the same bios's. Therefor they all contain the same base features (mostly booting unsigned code). Hardware features and support is where you want to base your decision on. If you want cheap + no manufacterer support there are 10$ solutions around for you(enabled/disables with power button). If you want support with a mod with a few extra hardware features (2 bios's, external switch) that'll cost around 30-40. Fancy Shamcy lcd support, 8 bios banks, blah blah blah fancy external thing thoes are up to 75ish. But in the end they all allow you to run the same software on the xbox.
if you want to learn read some beginner tutorials at http://tutorials.xbox-scene.com
Omega215D - Thursday, November 11, 2004 - link
After seeing Halo 2, it makes me wonder if they really need Pixel Shader 2.0. Its pretty cool that I can play old games on the XBOx through emulators though but i wanna see when the next XBOX kicks off before spending $200.ViRGE - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
#12, probably not. The Xbox's GPU is a GeForce 4 class GPU - the lack of Pixel Shader 2.0 features can really be limiting.euph - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
is there any way to use the gpu for the pov-ray rendering?ukDave - Wednesday, November 10, 2004 - link
Little quote that sums up the SmartXX XBL saga:Q: just bought a Smart XX mod and I still don't know if i'll be able to play xbox live so please somebody tell me if i'll be able to play it.
A: There is no easy way to answer this question. First of all, it all depends on circumstance. Have you upgraded your hard drive? Has your Xbox ever been banned before? And, for newbs, are you thinking about playing on live while using a bios from the chip.
If you answered yes to any of these questions you've won a lifetime ban from Microsoft!
Sleep time :) And i don't even use XBL :D