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A Look Inside Virginia Tech's New Super Computer
Mr Bob "The original" bougert brings us "...a video of the Virginia Tech super computer centre. How many people think that super computer centres like this, with their reasonably cheap cost should be created in more places? This video of the infamous super computer should be interesting to some and pretty to look for others." It views like an ad for Apple, but Virginia Tech has scored quite an achievement with this milestone, and this should serve as a decent introduction for those unfamiliar with the project.
so we are going to post it anyway ?
Apple isnt a charity, shall we see what Microsoft are up to ?
Virginia Tech put together a spectacular number 3 ranked supercomputer for a (comparative) pittance in a (comparative) heartbeat. They did it with Apple's latest/greatest. Is it surprising that Apple wants this story told? I'm just shocked that they aren't filling the airwaves with the story (at the very least on every news program that PHBs watch).
My guess is that a number of folks are planning on building them. Especially now that the 1U G5 Xserve is out. Here is the issue though: VTech wanted to publicize this as a means to attract attention to their programs and Apple wanted to publicize this for obvious reasons. However, if I were a company (or a private or government institution), I may not want to advertise the fact that I am building one of these superclusters. Think about it. This could be a serious stealth weapon (so to speak) for a number of industries that have historically spent huge amounts of money on supercomputing infrastructures.
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This is really interesting! And I'm wondering how you got started. Have you done this for a while? Did you use Apple first, or PCs?
I've been doing the same (building custom PCs) for other people for years, and yet when it comes to my own computers I opt for Macs. I'm a recent convert. Why?
Because I got tired of struggling to make drivers work together, finding different games and programs were optimized for different chipsets, and dealing with Windows registries to try to make everything run as smoothly as possible.
Then I tried a Mac. Pretty much everything worked out of the box, smoothly (like it was optimized for the platform, not a specific driver), and almost everything I extra tried in it was practically designed to already work WITH what I already had in the computer. The OS is far more elegant and makes sense to my less savvy customers.
Price is often the bottom line. For the advantages, I prefer to run Macs personally. I can't fault people who opt for the dollar-accessability of PCs. I guess it's all in how you personally prioritize, and how much work you want to put into making the system work.
Damon,
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