At the risk of being called biased, didn't anyone notice that they were comparing a linux cluster on bright, shiny new equipment with fast CPUs to a cluster on dated IRIX gear? This might have been more interesting if they compared their Debian cluster with one of the SGI offerings using similar equipment (say, an Altix ICE cluster).

It's not exactly shocking to find that a cluster of 3 ghz itaniums beats a cluster of 400 mhz mips systems. :-)