Terra Soft Releases Rackable Dual G4/1GHz

pinqkandi writes "Terra Soft Solutions just released their new GVS 9000, a dual G4/1GHz 2U rack system. With Mac OS X and Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed, along with the Black Lab clustering suite, these boxes pack quite a lot of power. $3,839 + shipping." Another user adds, "As an added bonus, now you know where to go to find Linux users who look like Cindy Crawford." Yes, well.

Comments

A linux user who looks like Cindy Crawford

[psergiu]

...and let the DDoS^H^H^H^H/. effect begin ...

Servers and one crazy beowolf cluster

[Stigmata669]

I am excited and dissapointed to hear this announcement. First, the idea that other companies are becomming interested in apple products as servers is very cool! Sadly, this machine is still too expencive to be practical in any accademic setting, and cheap PCs are still going to rule that piece of the pie... until some 500mhz streamlined sub $1000 rackmounts show up. Remember, the PPC archetecture simply generates less heat and requires less electricity to run, making it ideal for clusters. Come on apple, widen your spectrum!

Re:Servers and one crazy beowolf cluster

[Graymalkin]

It's how it is done. They get them for the same rate as other VARs, instead of giving you a free printer they jam the components into a rackmount case. They even come with the Radeons in them like the G4 tower. They probably even make a few extra bucks ltting Apple have the cases back for use in refurbishing.

YDL chick

[Tom7]

Well, that chick is a bad enough actress to be real...
(Or just a bad actress!)

Does your computer "define who you are"??

But how about rackmount servers from Apple?

[hcdejong]

Rumors on "Thing 2" (a rackmountable server from Apple) have been floating around for some time now. And there's a petition underway.

And 2U is not enough (or too much...). With blade servers being the new wave, even a 1U unit may be seen as taking up too much space.

It's a start...

[frankie]

...but Apple really needs to get on the ball and put out their own 1U "RacMac" G4 line in the $1500 range. The G4 mobo already has on-board Gigabit ethernet. You don't need SuperDrives in a vector cluster.

The market is there, if only Lord Steve wants to do it.

Not new, not from TerraSoft.

[navywife]

OR, for those without the need for pre-installed YDL, you can order it directly from GVS with OS X, and save $400. It's good to see these units gaining exposure, but I think the editors of Apple(MacSlash)dot (what else to call the two sites) would better serve their readers by publicizing the source of this HW.

As far as these being "NEW!" The availability of these was noted way back here in a discussion of Mac clustering.

As long as Apple(MacSlash)dot are posting exactly the same news day-to-day, it seems appropriate that I post identical commments to both sites...

why so expensive? ... allowed?

[kossico]

The reason that these are so expensive is that Terra Soft must first purchase the G4s from Apple, and THEN do their modifications or whatever and then sell them to their customers. As we all know, there's no "clone" market allowed.

Or am I wrong?

Re:$3,839 ???

[Lars T.]

Of course SPEC doesn't account for SIMD. Not even with the super-duper Intel compiler.

Re:Benchmarks?

[Graymalkin]

What the fuck are you talking about? SPEC runs functions on both the integer and floating point units that are taken from a wide array of common funtions. There's a bunch of crap flooding the waves about SPEC but the whole point of SPEC is you can do anything you want to optimize performance EXCEPT alter the actual source code. SPEC doesn't use SSE or 3DNow! instructions just like it doesn't use AltiVec. The G4 is a good performer but this crap about SPEC benchmarks has become ludicrous. C't did a shitty benchmarking job but it isn't the fault of SPEC or the tests. If you want to blame x86 bias look to the compilers. It's tough to find a proper PPC C compiler let alone a proper Fortran PPC compiler.

Re:$3,839 ???

[Lars T.]

Sure you can use SIMD! But hardly any compiler does (because it's hard for a compiler to see when they can use it, esp. when using C(++)), including AFAIK the Intel compiler. At least c't hasn't reported that anything had changed from version 4.5 in mid 2000, when it only used around 20 prefetch (not SIMD) instructions in all of the SPECint95 suite. Remember SSE also contains non-SIMD instructions.

And if you think that "this is a fair reflection of the performance a user can expect on normal code", because the norm for programs would be to be simply compiled with the "normal" compiler, you also have to use the results from the MS compiler, not from gcc or Intel.

One more thing, while c't said they used the Absoft Fortran compiler, they did not mention wether they also used the "VAST-F/Vector - preprocessor which automatically inserts AltiVec instructions in your code."