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Myrinet Available for Mac OS X
KeithOSC writes "Looks like Apple may have one more step closer to real parallel computing. Myricom has just released its drivers for their high-speed cluster computing interconnect. I've been beta testing for two months now. With my findings, Mac OS X may be a real Beowulf cluster option. (Now, if Apple would just give us faster memory and PCI buses.)"
This is a great thing for research facilities where Mac has always held a strong foothold (along with academia) also when a *large* cluster is not needed, running MacOS would be a bit more friendly for researchers to administrate their own little 10 node beowolf...
I'm an AIX Systems administrator, and yes I do cry myself to sleep at night....
Not Just Because...
There are rumors Steve Jobs has started visiting major special effects houses, etc. Literally approaching the people who work there (and who have said they would love to be able to use a Mac from start to finish) and ask "what do you need from apple to make your work better (assuming that they think it would be done better all on macs, etc.)". From the replies I have seen (again, rumors): Atleast dual processors, quad would be nice, need a 1U rack case, faster bus, memory, etc. These places don't care about cost if it helps them get work done better (and isn't obscene) and actually saves them money.
The power required to run a full 1U rack of dual G4 machines (70 machines) is considerably less than that of dual AMD machines. When you are clustering lots and lots of these machines, that starts to really add up. And less power usage means less heat, so less AC cost. And those are just the rarely considered expenditures.
Apple is moving to make some big splashes in the Highend market. They now have an operating system that can be used in the highend market and the consumer market, at the same time. Which means applications can move from one market to the other easily, cross polinating etc. (iMovie bringing digital video editing to the masses, is something of an example).
I doubt these guys wrote the drivers entirely by themselves. This would require some very low level stuff, and lots of help from apple (because low level stuff is still being tweaked, etc.) meaning that apple had to partake in it. Apple probably initiated them to actually do this. Why? because in a few months, after the drivers have stabilized Apple will announcing products that will use it.
I think it's cool that apple seems to have a balancing point behind keeping a product a secret, but still getting field testing of their more obscure stuff. (Highspeed networking / clustering of this type is a foreign beast to their current hardware, and to the market that would be using them, because macosX has never worked with it before.) the same is true with BlueTooth. They showing you their cards, knowing they still have an ace up their sleeve.