In the article they said the 30K core machine would be #42 in the Top500. Except it wasn't submitted as a candidate.
It would be interesting to have a super computer config in one's EC2 portfolio for the quick CFD run, or animation sequence.
It is the latter which I find an interesting question. How hard would it be to create an 'on the fly' CGI studio? Something where your artists and their workstations are around 24/7 but when it comes time to render you pop it off to EC2 and just bill the studio for the time. That could be pretty disruptive in that business.