Two-thousand two-hundred (2200) Apple G5 processors power the world's 3rd fastest supercomputer in the world.
As of December, it's the most powerful supercomputer at any university in the world.
The Upgrade
On January 27, The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University said it has plans to upgrade it's supercomputer that uses Apple Computer Inc.'s PowerMac G5 computers with Apple's recently introduced Xserve G5 servers that have two chips in each box. The 1100 computer PowerMac to Xserve G5 swap will be complete by May.
"It cuts the system's size down by a factor of three," says Srinidhi Varadarajan, assistant professor of computer science, college of engineering, at Virginia Tech. "The new system will take much less power and generate less heat and free up space."
Rack 'em Up
Ever since I'd first heard about the installation I found it rather strange that they'd chosen to go with 1100 dual-processor desktop PowerMac G5's. They were in a hurry, apparently. Yes, that's all that was available at the time. The dual-processor 1U Xserve G5 rack systems certainly make more sense. Now that they're available, they're giving themselves an "upgrade". I'd say there's nothing like a multi-million dollar budget to purchase a new supercomputer every six months, now is there?
Links
Watch a Quicktime Movie of the original PowerMac G5 installation here: Virginia Tech's Supercomputer
Read the orignial Reuters story here.
Check out the 64-bit Apple Xserve G5 here. (Apple touts it as "the classiest 1U server with dual 64-bit processors." I have to agree.)
Photo sources: Apple Computer, Inc. and Apple's Quicktime web site.
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