I've been doing parallel research in both openmosix openmosix.sourceforge.net and the fantastic 3D modeling/animation program Maya for a little while now, and was wondering if anyone has any practical or hands on experience implementing an openmosix linux processing cluster for the purpose of rendering maya .mb files...

I haven't experimented much with the linux Maya renderer, in fact, I haven't been able to find one just yet that comes from Alias! But I believe there could be an interesting research project to be had in creating a cluster of perhaps 4 machines (AMD 2.0Ghz and a 512mb dimm of ram in each) that all boot to openmosix and await a render request. The throughput on something like that could be fantastic, and the pricepoint for this cluster would be quite small.

Any ideas, or comments? If I get the funds/knowledge/time/experience/software/location/energy to pull this off I'll surely share my findings.