Virginia Tech Building Power Mac G5 Supercomputer

TechNewsWorld ^ | 9/3/2003 | Jay Lyman

[Boss_Jim_Gettys]

The entire system cost $5.2 million, utilizing 1100 dual processor G5 Power Macs with 4 GB RAM and a 160 GB hard drive each.

On September 4 an informational session was held at Virginia Tech giving details on the system. A synopsis can be found at MacRumors.

It is interesting that the Power Mac G5 system was chosen purely on a cost vs. performance basis over competing systems from Dell, Sun, IBM and HP.

It will also be interesting to see how this beast compares to the PNNL supercomputer cluster based on Itanium2 processors (posted here) once it gets cranked up in October/November.

No Intel, no AMD, no Penguin!

[Boss_Jim_Gettys]

ping

[Ben Hecks]

Just so it runs Appleworks.

[Asclepius]

"It will allow calculations that have been difficult on other clusters and allow us to peer into a new level of research."

Quite right. Peer into, but never enter in any real or productive way. You'll always be a tourist, because you're using macintosh.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[Boss_Jim_Gettys]

You'll always be a tourist, because you're using macintosh."

Well, with the new G5 I'm on the Concorde and you're flying coach in a 707!

Oh, and in the arena of cluster supercomputers, it looks like my airfare is about half what you paid!

[Roscoe]

Will it be able to emulate a PC?

[Boss_Jim_Gettys]

Pinging the Mac faithful...

Come on in and gloat.

G5 Power Mac, the fastest and most cost-effective personal computer.

[July 4th]

Hypercard too, please. :)

[July 4th]

Oh man...I said that tongue-in-cheek. I had no idea Hypercard was still around. It was so bad the last time I used it, I figured it had been killed at least 5 years ago.

[Boss_Jim_Gettys]

"Will it be able to emulate a PC?"

Not for a while. Micro$oft does not have a G5-compatible version of Virtual PC.

"Currently, Virtual PC 6.1 does not run on the Power Mac G5," Microsoft's Sandra Peignaux told Macworld UK. Users attempting to install the Windows emulation software will get an error message, saying: "This application is not supported by the CPU." Peignaux said "Virtual PC relies on a feature of the G3/G4 processors called 'pseudo little-endian mode' for increased performance when emulating a Pentium processor." Because the G5 processor does not support this feature, "much of the program will have to be rewritten to work on G5's." Support for the new Power Macs will be introduced in a future release, she confirmed. No timeframe was given for the update."

I guess they don't want a Mac to emulate a PC faster than a PC!

[Roscoe]

Not for a while.

I'll wait.

[The KG9 Kid]

Interesting.

Thanks for the ping, but I'm not one of the 'Mac Faithful': I'm not a platform zealot whatsoever.

I recommend that you abandon platform zealotry too. It's an annoying and silly throwback to the 1990 mindset.

[Physicist]

Will it be able to emulate a PC?

Sorry, it will take quite a bit of work to get this to run all the latest viruses.

[xm177e2]

In addition to the latest Mac operating system and dual 2-GHz Power Mac G5 machines, which Apple touts as the fastest desktop computers in the world

Is this true?

[Physicist]

A little bird told me about this. Actually, a big bird. Sort of a turkey.

Just so long as you guys don't call it "Orchard".

Did JMU score today, by any chance?

[Lurker]

LOL!!!!

L

[Roscoe]

Ouch.

[aruanan]

But it won't break down as often as PCs, so it can't be a real supercomputer like the PNNL supercomputer cluster based on Itanium2 processors.

[Silent One]

Unless Virginia Tech can break the $100 / GFLOP barrier, this is too little too late.

The University of Kentucky appears to have a definite lead with Purdue's expertise. See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/969204/posts and look up the work of Henry G. Deitz http://aggregate.org/hankd/ .