Amazon EC2 provides cloud computing. Their largest computing instance (Extra large Instance) includes:
It will cost only $.80 per hour per unit with Linux (one time yearly fee is $2600) plus whatever bandwidth you use.7 GB of memory, 20 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform. EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) – One EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor.
Could tournament participants use these instances for games? Any advantages on using this massive resources?
Here is an interesting comparison of Super computers and EC2.
http://ianfoster.typepad.com/blog/2009/ ... r-ec2.html
I have personally used small instances of EC2 few months ago and they were cheap and relatively easy to setup.