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More on Virginia Tech G5 Cluster: 17.6 Tflops

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-a-lotta-flops dept.

daveschroeder writes "BBC World's Click Online has a video report (with text transcript) on Virginia Tech's new 1100-node dual 2.0 GHz G5 Terascale Cluster. The report quotes the performance as 17.6 Tflops. As a point of reference, the cluster would be number 2 on the most recent June Top 500 list, behind only Japan's Earth Simulator, and considerably more than doubling the performance of the current number 3 1152-node dual 2.4 GHz Xeon MCR Linux cluster. Assuming the performance figure accurately reflects the LINPACK score (which it should; since the deadline for submissions for the upcoming list of Oct 1 has already passed, one would imagine VT would quote that figure), and depending on new entries for November's upcoming list, the cluster should almost certainly rank in the top 5 - all for only US$5.2 million. The video report is available in Windows Media 9 and Real formats; the relevant portion starts at 13:00."

4 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Are they all running Panther? by failedlogic · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    What's been left behind is wether or not these systems are using Panther as the OS. It would seem that with this kind of performance, an Apple supplied OS -- as opposed to Yellow Dog would -- only be capable of performing well on the G5 since Panther has processor optimizations for the G5.

    If the original XServers were too costly and low performance (since they came with a G4) wouldn't a G5 server (since the performance is apparently much better) be a great option for small/medium size businesses for a web/mail/database server?

  2. SUPERCOMPUTER for the rest of us by danigiri · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    Slap together 4-5 G5 (conceivable to be together in an office) and you have your home-brewn supercomputer cluster.

    Then there's only the need of coming up with the applications to use it (besides research), apart from gobbling up seti@home data snippets for breakfast.

    However, XCode and Rendezvous enable something in this front, enabling distributed seamless compilation of big projects.

  3. And the point is? by aitsu · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    And the title of the first research project using this? "The Environmental Impact of Meeting the Power Requirements for an 1100-Node Dual-G5 Server Cluster: A Simulated Model"

  4. Re:Can the results be trusted? by cosmo7 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    They do? Then how come nobody ever sees it? My linux setup does newer crash.

    Either that's a typo or the most ironically appropriate ascii bit error in the history of computing.