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Virginia Tech to Build Top 5 Supercomputer?
hype7 writes "ThinkSecret is running a story which might explain exactly why the Dual 2GHz G5 machines have been delayed to the customers that ordered them minutes after the keynote was delivered. Apparently, Virginia Tech has plans to build a G5 cluster of 1100 units. If it manages to complete the cluster before the cut-off date, it will score a Top 5 rank in the Linpack Top 500 Supercomputer List. Both Apple and the University are playing mum on the issue, but there's talk of it all over the campus."
For certain types of processing (rc5 cracking is one example), Macs completely smoke PCs. For example, distributed.net stats show that a 667Mhz G4 can process more keys/second than a 2.8Ghz P4. Considering how much faster a 2Ghz G5 would be, a 1100-node cluster would be damn powerful if you were doing work that mapped well onto Altivec.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
The SSE2 unit on the P4 or the Opteron would have nearly the same performance and cost a whole heck of a lot less.
Uh, no. 2 years ago, my roommate and I were both running the distributed.net client. I have a 500 Mhz Powerbook G4 (100Mhz bus). He had a 1.4GHz P4 with rambus RAM. I got 4Million keys/sec. He got 2MKeys/sec.
So clock for clock, my machine was nearly 4 times faster.
I have a shitty sig!