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Supercomputers based on Apple’s Xserve technology landed four spots on the newest TOP500 list. The announcement came during the 20th International Supercomputer Conference, held this week in Heidelberg, Germany. Presented by the Universities of Mannheim and Tennessee and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NESRSC) Center, the TOP500 project collects performance benchmarks for the most powerful computing systems on the planet. The TOP500 list is created by comparing the best performance of the “Linpack” benchmark, which tests the system by making it solve a dense system of linear equations. The TOP500 list is generated twice each year. Four Apple-based supercomputers...

Apple's Xserve could make inroads in the data center Its dirt-cheap dual-processor server competes favorably with rival offerings FEBRUARY 28, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Last month, Brandchannel.com dubbed Apple Computer Inc. the "brand with the most global impact." But you'd never know it by looking at corporate desktops today. Windows machines are the undisputed personal computers of choice for corporate IT, the biggest single market for PCs. Research conducted by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC underscores the fact. IDC ranked the maker of Macintosh machines No. 10 on its market-share list in 2004, two spots behind the Chinese company Lenovo Group Ltd.—and the...

The new Turing Xserve Cluster at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is the one of the latest large-scale high speed computing systems to use Apple's Xserve G5. The director in charge of the program said the decision to use Apple hardware and software made sense based on price, performance, compatibility, efficiency and support. The Turing Xserve Cluster -- named after Alan Turing, the famed British mathematician credited with founding the field of Computer Science -- is a 640-node system that uses 2GHz dual-processor Xserve G5s, Apple's rack-mounted server. Running Mac OS X v10.3 Server, the systems talk using...

Hardware Today: Apple Takes Xserve Hypersonic By Drew Robb Apple has carved out a niche on the desktop, and has a loyal following in graphics design, video editing, and other similar technical fields. More recently, it has stormed the world with the iPod. But few think of the company as a player in the supercomputing field. Yet that is exactly where its Xserve G5 line of servers is making waves. Case in point: the Hypersonic Missile Technology (HMT) team at Huntsville, Alabama based COLSA Corp. has adopted a supercomputing platform consisting of 1,566 of the 64-bit, dual-processor Apple Xserve G5...

A U.S. Army contractor has purchased a $5.8 million, 1,566-server supercomputer from Apple Computer, a real-world cousin to an academic system that briefly appeared high on a list of the most powerful machines. In November, a machine called System X with 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5 workstations climbed to third place on the Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers. On Monday, Huntsville, Ala.-based Colsa announced it's buying a larger system called MACH 5 to run Army simulations of the aerodynamics of flight much faster than the speed of sound. System X, which vanished from the most recent list for...

With the 20th anniversary this month of the original Macintosh approaching, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs told MacWorld Expo attendees in San Francisco on Tuesday that 2004 would be a "great Mac year." "Microsoft's copying us again--it feels great," said Jobs, who said 9.3 million Apple users--about 40% of the company's installed base--have upgraded to Mac OS X, the company's 3-year-old operating system. But Jobs didn't introduce any new desktops or laptops during his annual keynote address. Instead, he demonstrated a collection of new software designed to drive sales of Macs running OS X, and unveiled a lower-priced version...