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Virginia Tech on Your Mac Life
YourMacLife writes "On tonight's Your Mac Life, the Dean of Virginia Tech's College of Engineers, Hassan Aref, will talk about the G5 cluster the college is building and what it means to supercomputing. Questions can be sent in advance to onair@yourmaclife.com." See the web site for more details.
Reports I've read say they will be running a special version of Darwin designed for high performance clusters.
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Does this mean they're planning on running some variant of BSD? I would imaging that, for licensing sake, they wouldn't put a stock Mac OS on there (OSX)... would cost "too much" and would provide "more" than they need.
Unlimited Client X server costs only 1000.
Bravo for the effort... but, methinks they could do this more cheaply (although, not 64-bit) with stock PC hardware.
Based on the likely purposes of this cluster, that's completely meaningless. This is what 64-bit hardware is for.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Well, can I?
Wrong. That means that you can have an unlimited number of people connect to your server. It does not mean that you can run an unlimited number of copies.
Does this mean they're planning on running some variant of BSD? I would imaging that, for licensing sake, they wouldn't put a stock Mac OS on there (OSX)... would cost "too much" and would provide "more" than they need.
Each Mac comes with a license for OS X. Besides, I'm sure for such a high profile customer, Apple would work out a nice deal for any future upgrades. Even if they didn't, it would only cost ~$75k to buy a new license of OS X for each machine at EDU prices.
Where were you when this was posted? Clearly Virginia Tech's already done the pricing homework versus commodity PC hardware. Meanwhile, I'm sure Apple will give them a nice deal for buying so many machines (plus free advertising for the ol' fruit company, eh?)
What does the 10-user licenses cover? I thought if I was using it as a Windows SMB server, that since it was using Samba, it would be already unlimited users because of the GPL license. Does the 10-user count only limit AFP connections or SSH clients or what. Just curious what the user licenses are needed for?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Wrong. That means you can have an unlimited number of people connecting via AFP.
The 10 user license only restricts the number of people that can simultaneously connect via AFP, there are no restrictions on the number of users created or the number of users simultaneously connecting via SAMBA, FTP or NFS.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Bravo for the effort... but, methinks they could do this more cheaply (although, not 64-bit) with stock PC hardware.
Pundits say the machine is actually cheap. For a 64-bit machine with all the I/O and bus trimmings it is priced nicely. The only thing I'm amazed at is that VT didn't wait for headless cluster-only Xserves. Rack mounting the G5 case looks like it would be a hassle and a shame.
Eh, I didn't indicate a protocol, but that doesn't make my original point any less valid and that was that you can only install it once even with the unlimited client access license.
OK. You answered my previous question about wht the licenses were for. Now another question, why would you buy AFP licenses if obviously the Macs can talk over SMB or NFS for free? What is the AFP advantage that makes it worth paying for? I'm sure Samba is more difficult to configure that AFP but if your running a server, you should have the ability to handle the few extra steps.
Once again, just curious?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Yeah, it's called MacOS X. (early version of Panther)
I would imaging that, for licensing sake, they wouldn't put a stock Mac OS on there (OSX)
What? They are buying 1100 machines, they get 1100 copies of MacOS X. What kind of licensing issue are you dreaming of?
Huh? Are you implying that they would have to pay more for a Apple with an OS than one without? What cave have you been living in for the past 20 years?
methinks they could do this more cheaply (although, not 64-bit) with stock PC hardware.
Maybe you should tell them, because a school with an entire group of people looking at this problem full-time obviously would never have though of checking the prices of PCs. I'm just glad that you're so incredibly smart that you know more about computing clusters than a team of PhDs.
By the way, OS X is a BSD.
Um, every Mac purchased comes with a copy of OS X. That's 1100 licenses right there. Not sure if each one needs to be the server OS, but I seriously doubt it in a node set-up.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
Point. 8)
But, it was more of a general comment about the move by Apple to go to a BSD-based OS (compared to OS 9, for instance) that would have made it a viable platform for these advanced uses.
In retrospect, that point/question wasn't framed as well as I had hoped.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Time is a big factor here, as the article says they've got to finish it by the 1st October for them to enter the super computer rankings for this year.
So although a cluster of X-Serves would make more sense they can't really wait.
Don't blame me - this
Yeah, PC users generally have a hard time understanding that the computer hardware & software are sold as one product by Apple. You're buying a computer that works. No product activation to worry about, no buck passing and finger pointing when you need support.
:P
There is also no such thing as a "full version" of Mac OS like Windows. All boxed copies are upgrades to whatever you got when you bought it. Mac users tend to forget that when they complain about upgrade prices - why isn't there an ungrade price, why do i have to pay full price? er you are buying the upgrade
Don't blame me - this
According to the many articles I've read concerning this, they compared price and performance with a lot of different companies and machines. So, no. They wouldn't have gotten it cheaper with Linux and Intel.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
Compared to the ASCI series put together by the US government, $5M is not a lot of money. Consider that a single Sun SF15k, IBM p or z series or HP SuperDome can cost easily this much (that's just one machine).
I think VT are getting a pretty good deal. Really large clusters/supercomputers *can* cost upwards of $30M, depending on the configuration.
if you set up the machines to use remote home directories from an os x server it will use AFP by default. also, i believe in earlier versions of os x, the server browser only showed AFP servers. i could be wrong on that last point tho. either way, they've certainly made the os play a lot nicer with various connection methods over the years.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
The deadlines for this project procurement are probably related to Federal grant funding cycles. The US Government fiscal year kicks over in October.
They are trying to make the deadline for the Top 500 list of supercomputers here. The conference is in early November and they need to be able to run the LinPack benchmarks on the system in order to get a spot. They will hopefully make it into the Top 5.
They probably didn't consider this, but resale could be a factor as well. When they upgrade their Super Computer to a G6 in a few years, I would guess that they would have an easier time reselling a bunch of PowerMacs than a bunch of Xserves. How cool would it be to say you have a piece of a Super Computer?
I believe they were in a rush to beat the cutoff date for the Linpack Top 500 Supercomputer List
Apple gave them the performance and, I'm sure, the sweet deal they needed to make it happen.
You know what?
It wasn't that great, so you didn't miss much. It starts at 1:17 and ends at about 1:37 in the archive file for those who would like to listen. For everyone else, here is a list of the highlights: That is about it. Not much as far as technical details. Mr. Aref said they will release all of the technical details later. He wouldn't venture a guess on where they will be on TOP500 until he's seen some benchmarks, but they obviously expect to make the top 10.
Personally, I am extremely curious about this whole project. Using a desktop chassis seems like an unconvential way to build a large cluster, so the photos will be very interesting. But the documentary! I think that is awesome. This might provide a unique perspective into how a large cluster is built (Mr. Aref joked that it involved a lot of pizza).
Actually, they paid regular .edu institution prices for all machines. They were ordered through the Apple store online. Apple did give them a break on RAM - Crucial RAM at wholesale (NOT Apple) prices, preinstalled before the machines shipped.
I just heard through one of the people involved that 900 machines have arrived now. Out of those, only 2 were DOA. That's less than 0.25%. Impressive. And only 200 more to go.
Nope, the Dean of the Engineering school says they are using Mac OS X for now. They might look at something else in the future, but for now it is 10.2.7 (the only OS that fully supports Apple's G5).
having to wait another month to get my hands on my preordered dualie! I was so upset, I bought an iMac for my wife, and now I feel much better.
I don't know what kind of subliminal messages Steve puts in his keynotes, but my wallet opens itself around apple logos these days. Scary.