TOP500 List of World’s Fastest Supercomputers Released - Mac G5 cluster is 3rd fastest

Top 500 Computers ^ | 11/16/2003

[Swordmaker]

Virginia Tech's Mac G5 based cluster placed 3rd overall... using 2Mhz 970s. Apple will soon be releasing the 3MHz 970s. I wonder what rating they will get? Perhaps a cluster built with them will take over the number two spot.

Hmmm... PC based Pentium4 Xeon placed 4th, and Itanium2 based clusted placed 5th.

I guess that answers that question.

[krb]

2Mhz 970s

Wow...my Apple //c+ was faster than 2MHz :-)

[snowrip]

You betcha it does...

[Vermonter]

ping

[billhilly]

An Apple a day...

[Paul C. Jesup]

Already, 131 systems report a Linpack performance exceeding 1 Tflop/s. Performance levels at all positions of the TOP500 list keep growing impressively, driven by Moore’s Law. The total combined performance of all 500 computers on the list exceeded the level of half a “petaflop/s” (or quadrillion of calculations per second). It is now 528 TFlop/s, compared to 375 Tflop/s just six months ago. The “slowest” system on the newest listing is now 403.4 Gflop/s (“gigaflops” or billions of calculations per second), compared to 245.1 Gflop/s six months ago.

Moore's law can still be applied. :D

[Capt. Tom]

The Earth Simulator supercomputer retains the number one position with its Linpack benchmark performance of 35.86 Tflop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second). It was built by NEC

I owned a NEC computer. This can't be the same company. -Tom

[Swordmaker]

Mhz 970s Wow...my Apple //c+ was faster than 2MHz :-)

Oops... 2Ghz!! gadzooks!

[ikka]

what kinds of calculations we talking about (simulation of an earthquake? 1000 photoshop filters run on 1000 images?)

For most of the machines, and all of the cluster ones, the idea is to break down the problem into smaller pieces, run each smaller piece on one of the CPUs, then combine the results together to come up with the answer.

Examples include: simulation of a nuclear bomb explosion (you can calculate each portion of the 3D space separately); finite-element analysis of the aerodynamic properties of a car or airplane's wing (split the surface into 1 inch sections and compute them separately); that sort of thing.

It doesn't make Freeping any faster, however :-)

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[JSteff]

"This cluster is built with the Apple G5 as building blocks..."

....however no one would write any apps for it so it died like all other apples.

[Swordmaker]

Ping for speed...

[general_re]

I guess that answers that question.

What was the question? ;)

Actually, I'll be the first to pee in the pool here. I still have yet to see any neutral benchmarks, SPEC in particular, that show the 2 GHz G5 outperforming top of the line Xeons or I2s. At best so far, performance appears to be on par with Xeons on a clock-for-clock basis, which is what gives the edge to Intel for the moment - higher clock rates.

So I tend to discount the notion that the G5 is inherently faster than the 3 GHz Xeons per se, and I'll guess that the real difference is in the networking technology - many of the Intel systems are built on older Myrinet interconnects, and it seems likely that the newer Infiniband stuff is faster and/or more efficient than Myrinet or the Quadrics interconnects. That being said, what's most impressive about the VT cluster, to my mind, is the bang for the buck they achieved - #3 is pretty dang impressive considering how much (little) they spent to get there.

BTW, my alma mater ranks in the top 40. How about yours? ;)

[RedBloodedAmerican]

You get up to the need for that speed, you will likely be running a server, at which point you can run Win2k advanced server, run NLB (across 32 servers), cluster service, 8-way SMP and support up to 32 processors .

And G5 may be fast, but isn't nice to also have the ability to be compatible?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the ping!

I've got to upgrade my machine, it just seems so slow now.

Newegg has a nice special on an AMD 64 3200+ with ASUS board and CoolerMaster Heat Sink for $525 after a small rebate. That could get me started ! LOL!!!

[Wacka]

And VT's cluster uses half the number of computers that the Xeon cluster. Therefore the Mac G5 processor is over twice as fast.

[Question_Assumptions]

That's funny because I have Microsoft Office loaded on my Mac. What PC users often fail to grasp is that having a choice of 100,000 programs that aren't worth the CDs that they are distributed on isn't all that useful. And if you absolutely positively need to run a Windows program, VirtualPC lets you run Windows XP in a window on your Mac.