The Dawn of the Apple Supercomputer

[Mac Reporter]

Illuminata senior analyst Gordon Haff thinks Apple's recently announced deal with COLSA gives Apple the credibility to make further inroads in "sci-tech" at lower levels as well. "They are seeing wins in biotech with smaller deals, and this deal legitimizes the PowerPC architecture they are using in their products," Haff told MacNewsWorld.

Apple's delivery of its Xserve-based MACH5 supercomputer to COLSA Corporation means more than validation of its role in the world of high-performance computing, according to Horst Simon, associate laboratory director of computing sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility in California.

Simon, also a co-author of the Top 500 list that tracks supercomputers internationally, believes this is an exciting time for the whole industry.
"There has never been such turnover on the list," he told MacNewsWorld. "Only 70 systems remain from November 2002 out of [the present-day] 500, which means purchasing activity is high for high-performance computing."

Read more at MacNewsWorld.

[El CaMOTe]

If the Virginia Tech supercomputer containing thousands (?) of G5s is being upgraded and currently out of the supercomputer list, if they change G5s where do the 'phased out' computers go ??

Hope somebody 'por kilo's' it and sells it in the open market. G5 prices will drop !! Good for all of us !!:P

[Henjie]

Originally posted by El CaMOTe
If the Virginia Tech supercomputer containing thousands (?) of G5s is being upgraded and currently out of the supercomputer list, if they change G5s where do the 'phased out' computers go ??

Hope somebody 'por kilo's' it and sells it in the open market. G5 prices will drop !! Good for all of us !!:P

The 1,100 dual-2GHz Power Mac G5s originally used in the VT cluster were already sold a few months back, minus the Infiniband PCI cards and some of the extra RAM. Final config was near-stock except for the extra 512MB RAM for 1GB total. VT contracted MacMall to do the selling. They were sold for $2,799 each which was around $200 less than the price of a brand-new unit back then (early February). :-)


~Henjie

[weremermaid]

The "Big Mac" Supercomputer Biz

Apple wasn't a serious player until researchers discovered how well its high-end computer clusters perform for a relatively low price

... COOL ADVANTAGE.* Mach 5 is slated to go into service this fall at the Army Research & Development Command's Aviation & Missile Research, Development & Engineering Center in Huntsville. It will do nothing but run one job: simulating hypersonic flight. Currently, the center uses an aging IBM supercomputer with 284 processors, and each simulation chews up a solid month of computing time. With Mach 5, says Anthony C. DiRienzo, executive vice-president at Colsa, "they'll be able to do a new run every day, overnight."


Also, speaking of CRAY computers, "The Last Starfighter" was the first film ever to use computer generated effects, courtesy of a Cray! Pre-Star Wars! More here.

Cherrie

[Edited on 8-9-2004 by weremermaid]