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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.
This is a repost of "Xgrid Clustering Software and Demo" in the Apple section..it's just one of the links listed in the story.
Scott
so we are going to post it anyway ?
Apple isnt a charity, shall we see what Microsoft are up to ?
iGrow tired of all these apple stories.
It views like an ad for Apple,
Gee, did the fact that it was hosted at apple.com clue you in?
>I wonder if the VT folks had to buy an OSX license for each node of their "cluster." They bought full towers, all of which came pre-loaded with OS X. (no additional fee)
Here I was feeling manly because i just upgraded my mac to 1Gig of Ram.
:-)
I wish I could have this in my basement.. and I would serve old games of quarterstaff on it.
I am the lord of the pun. Dance Knave!
Now we are going to need to stretch the definition of a Computer for the liciense agreements . . . Should've gone with a free OS. Like DR. DOS :)
http://www.toadywonders.com The Empire of Todd
build your own with xGrid!
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Quote from the article:
"I think there is too much entropy on Windows."
If only microsoft would put some energy into keeping the entropy at an acceptable level. Now they are just observing the laws of physics.
-- Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
...what they could do now for the same cost using the new Xserve dual 2 Ghz G5.
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
512K L2 cache/processor
1GHz system bus/processor
512B DDR400 ECC SDRAM
80GB Serial ATA drive
Dual Gigabit Ethernet
All for only $3000. They could really built a small, inexpensive cluster with a couple thousand of those.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
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).
This was shown at MWSF, of course it's an ad.
It was finished a while ago. Currently it holds the number three spot in the world.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
Infamous is when you're more than famous! This super computer is not just famous, it's IN-famous!
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
It's currently #3
Now I am the ass who can't post a link. We both suck. I some how blame it on the security flaw in MS Word. This is a link
This is just a reposting of an earlier Slashdot article, and should be modded down.
Congratulations - you've found an occupation even lower than troll: plagarist.
Sailing over the event horizon
Go to your options homepage
Exclude Apple or whatever else you're tired of seeing.
Or, more practically, see the apple logo, Don't read the summary or the article, then enter the thread and whine about it.
Letter To Iran
As for you, the man with the pla: I told you that you should pray we not meet again, lad. For someone who hates /., you sure spend a hell of a lot of time here...
it's nice to know that after a hap-hazard movie career, Fisher Stevens can go on to do an Apple Commercial about the Virgina Tech Super Computer. He can put on a clever discuise, but the minute he said 'Oh no Jonny Five', I knew it was him.
thankfully their XServes have ECC ram... which would be more suitable for a G5 Cluster setup anyways.
And funny that it should happen after they've finally fully embraced open souce (OSX).
Wow, OS X is open source now! What will they do next?
I was amazed at the cost/performance ratio that they were able to achieve with Big Mac. Over at Barefeats.com, they point out that a Dual 2ghz G5 is roughly 17% faster AND more expensive than a Dual 1.8 G5 - keeping the cost/performance ratio fairly equal. Taking this out to supercomputer levels, the #1 supercomputer is three and a half times faster than Big Mac but cost 60x as much money!!! Amazing.
The video states that the top two cost in the hundreds of millions to build...but never says how long ago. Dont get me wrong the Mac cluster is quite impressive and inexpensive but the price to power ratio has been changing quite rapidly just in the last few months! So if you rebuilt the top two today how would they rank pricewise?
The project leader, Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, will be speaking at a session entitled Building Virginia Tech's G5 Supercluster on Jan 28 at the upcoming O'Reilly Mac OS X conference.
He'll probably reveal some of the technical details, such as the version of Mac OS X used, at that session.
Also, according to a blog at O'Reilly:
Next year, all the little known details [about the cluster] will be revealed in a new book. By that time we'll know what the project means for supercomputing and for Apple.
Does anyone know the relative speeds of todays PCs vs. an old super computer from the 80s?
UMass had one of those Connection Machines with the 65k processes and the blinking lights sitting unused in the basement for awhile and I was always curious to know whether it was any faster than what could be done serially with a 3GHz PC.
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
Apple doesn't place a giant markup on its products. They put a lot of money into product and industrial design. Therefore, Apple computer's cost more.
Virginia Tech did not get a discount on those machines. They purchased 1100 Dual 2ghz G5s at full price and spent around 3.5 million dollars on those machines. And other 1.5 to 2 million was spent on networking hardware, software, racks, etc.
Furthermore. You don't have to buy individual licenses for OS X. OS X server comes with an unlimited client license and you can put it on as many computers as you please. Or, you can decide to use OS X (client), and every new Mac comes with that for free anyway. There are also no serial number or license activation annoyances involved with OS X.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
that the videos use of Tflops as a mesurement (and whoever makes that top 10 supercomputer list referenced in the video) is not an acurate measure of computing power. rather the inifinity band interconnect they use for networking was why that number is so high (10.35 tflops).
anyone have any more technical info on this? i was left thinking from another article that tflops is a poor way to measure computing performance but i cant remmeber where i read that.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
And with this server we are able to kick out photoshopped images at an ALARMING rate!
Dell doesn't really develop a lot of software. Apple does.
And, yes, Apple builds it's machines outside of the US as well.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Doesn't run on Linux. Runs on Mac OS X. This has been clearly stated a number of times.
Why don't you get put the quicktime codecs to work with Xine. Nice and easy to do too.
Check part of xine's faq for details
No it doesnt, it runs linux
hasn't anyone else built one yet? The proof-of-concept is done, and let's face it, $5.2 million is tissue money for some companies. Don't they want their own 10 teraflop supercomputer?
Slashcode does that (inserts spaces) to prevent you from posting something like XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx :) [note that I didn't type space, that was one long string of XXXX's]
:)
and widening the page
When the first link [site.com] thing came out, someone found that they could link to XXXX[snip]XXXX.com and the page would widen. It sucked
My other car is first.
The VT supercomputer runs no Linux - it's all OS X.
Although, yeah, Apple should port QT to Linux.
This sig has been deprecated.
Most hardware vendors (even big ones like Dell) are lucky to pull off a 10% markup. Apple used to get 40%, and I think they are still up there. It's depressingly obvious now, too, because they use the same nvidia/ATI cards, the IDE drives, same everything except for motherboard, chip, case, and firewire. At least when they still used SCSI and custom video cards you could sort of avoid seeing it.
Apple made the decision long ago, and they chose the Sun model, not the M$ model. They could have licensed their OS and slugged it out for market share, but they chose to shoot for high margins and low penetration. It works, they make money. As long as they keep making cool stuff some people will spend the premium.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
I mean OS X...shouldda hit 'preview'
I understand the point you're making (QT on Linux -good), but I just wanted to clear up one miscomception. The V-T Supercomputer runs Mac OS X, not Linux. IIRC they even state this in the video.
I believe, according to the movie, the entire cluster does not run Linux, but on OS X.
I have looked and looked, but can't seem to find any information about the software that they have developed to make these G5's into a cluster. I'm curious to know what software was developed, and who developed it, i.e. Apple or the internal VA Tech team. I assume that MPI has been around for FreeBSD/OSX for a while. There must be some type of process migration, scheduling, and load balancing. If anybody has any links to any white papers or otherwise anything similiar, I'd appreciate to see them.
Thomas
:/
Alright. It's time to crawl out of the hole.
Download VLC or MPlayer. They both play Quicktime files and Sorenson 3 Quicktime files. Moreover, they play them better then the QuickTime player does. (they also play just about everything else in the world)
Every Linux user should have one, or both, of these media player installed on their machines. Seriously.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Canadian Cynic, canadian politics is less boring than you
The V-T supercomputer runs on Mac OS 10.3, not Linux
The servers hosting (and the bandwidth) those videos are probably comparable with the supercomputer itself just to handle all of us connecting to it...
I had a sucky sig.
they payed the standard educational price.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
What makes you think it runs on Linux? It runs OS X. The performance numbers were taken while the system was running OS X 10.2.
According to http://www.top500.org/list/2003/11/, number 1 and 2 were built all the way back in 2002. But neither uses off the shelf hardware. Both were custom built.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf04/
Yes, I'm karma-whoring...and you do it too, damnit!
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
I doubt they bought them at full standard retail price. Apple is one of few companies that still offer a meaningful educational discount to students and academics. When the say VT didn't get any special discounts, I believe it reflects the fact that they paid the standard academic price despite the size of the order. That is normally around 10-15% savings in itself. Try getting that from Dell! Last time I bought from them the 'discounted' system came back to normal price when I add back in the bits they had taken out (like the optical drive!!
Why does Cliff repeatedly use the word "infamous" (a synonym of "notorious") to describe nifty things, like a supercomputer. He did it earlier today with the article about the Internet Archive.
Maybe he's using the Three Amigos definition of the word...
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Yes, Apple does markup ram and video cards when you purchase that stuff separately.
However, Apple is also trying to cover software and hardware development, world famous industrial and interactive design teams, etc.
If you actually sit down and add up the numbers, you'll realize Apple is really not trying to rip people off. They're selling high end cases, with uncommon CPUs, and a custom operating system. Apple does not operate like a traditional hardware vendor.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
OS X server comes with an unlimited client license and you can put it on as many computers as you please.
Nope. Unlimited clients mean that unlimited clients can connect to the server. You still have to have separate OS licenses for your client machines. But this has nothing to do with clusters that run regular OS X.
Should we call this 'The Orchard'?
Yeah it runs on Linux aka OSX. Oh wait. OSX isn't linux. It's OSX which does have a quicktime player :)
My other car is first.
So if I'm an evil dictator, and I can build the worlds third fastest supercomputer for 5.2 million USD what can I do with it? Are all these cheap cycles going to mean I can break codes or do nuclear or biological weapons research faster? I'll be there are people in the US Defense Department, CIA, or NSA that might be concerned.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." -- Marx
"At a price of 5.2 million dollars, practically anyone can build one. "
I think I'll invest in one of these right after I pay off my iPod.
Mac OSX
Why not linux? Not enough support.
I don't know where this missconception came from, but the VT cluster does not run on linux it runs on Mac OS X.
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
I doubt that seriously although I'm sure there is an agreement not to divulge price.
Oddly, I have been in that building multiple times and this is the first time I have seen the infamous supercomputer. I guess I should have walked downstairs and taken a peek.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I have fat fingers....besides I had already corrected myself
And it's designed for exactly this type of use case (dual CPU, no CD ROM, only 1 HD capacity, no video card).
If you just want it to show in moz/firebird rather than having to find the link and leech it first, use the mplayerplug-in and quicktime will display in the browser.
Ummm...Their business model didn't work out that well. I remember a few years back Microsoft had to invest in the area of 160 Million dollars into Apple to help them out, as well as promise to keep making a mac version of office. You know why microsoft had to do this. So the doj wouldn't get them. lol
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
The story goes that the person doing the project contacted Apple and they blew him off at first. He eventually purchased from the online Apple Store.
I'm sure there was room for greasing each other's palms, but I think the price was so low to begin with that there was little point it argueing over a few hundred thousand, what with the deadline they were facing.
Ah, Dusty! Infamous is when you're more than famous! This Big Mac is not just famous, it's IN-famous!
You can VLC or mplayer to view Quicktime movies on Linux. Unless they're too difficult for you to figure out.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Slide Eleven [maybe] Software * Mac OSX o Why not linux? Not enough support. * Mellanox does Inifiniband drivers and HCA * MPI (parallel communications libraries) o Argonne National labs to get MPI-2 for the system * C, C++ compilers - IBM xlc and gcc 3.3 * Fortran 95/90/77 Compilers - IBM xlf and NAGWare
You are incorrect, and so is dictionary.com or whatever other shagheap you dug that from. Try looking it up in a real distionary, or getting an education other than in cut-and-paste from the 'I'm feeling lucky' option in Google.
karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go.
I was just thinking about Apple and the G5 and how Virgina Tech put together the 3rd fastest Super Computer in the world for a relatively small price tag.
I think it is impressive how Apple Computers can out preform the open hardware competition. They kept it all in house and look...
OSX - 1100 Nodes.... 2200 processors.... 10 Tflops Linux - 1152 Nodes.... 2304 processors.... half the preformance.
I think that says a lot about Apple as a company building quality products.
While wathing the video during the keynote, I couldn't imagine why Apple hasn't donated the remaining G5's (Desktop or XServe) to place them in the number two supercomputer slot.
Costs more than a video but would be even better PR (and tax deductible...)
MD
http://www.apple.com/education/science/profiles/va tech/
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!
Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubbernecken sichtseeren keepen das cotten-pickenen hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.
Have you seen their stock price? Have you see their revenues? Have you seen how much their stuff costs? Apple is the "little guy"?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
It's so beautiful I want to sleep in there with those G5s!
But also, remember Microsoft actually does make software for Apple products...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I build my own computers, I don't buy Dell, or Compaq. I can build an amazing Athlon 2500 system, with a nice Nforce2 board, and the works for just under a thousand dollars. So why would I ever pay 1800$ or even 2500$, I can't affor Apple, and I don't think the performance increase is worth it. I run an apple G5 here at work, and it doesn't seem faster than the dual athlon MP system I built. Which after seeing the bill for the G5, I could have nearly built two dual athlon machines.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Paragraphs, man. They're useful.
Anyway.. no OpenMosix here, this is using MPI. Specifically, on top of DK Panda's MPI libraries, they brought Kazushige Goto in to optimize the BLAS libraries in order to obtain the Top500 ranking of 10+ TF.
Incidentally, the Top500 rankings are based on a standardized LINPACK benchmark and formula, not "raw" processor rankings. I saw another comment that implied the latter.
Other interesting notes:
I wonder if the VT folks had to buy an OSX license for each node of their "cluster."
What's really interesting is - can anyone ever buy any Macintosh unit WITHOUT an OS X license?
sorry, you can't get your hands on a G5
You mean, like OS X? Yeah, that's in there.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
the others are ugly and slow and loud
What the heck is 'industrial design' anyway?
I haven't seen that one on an Apple Buzzword bulleted list in awhile, thought maybe it had gone away.
What does it actually mean??
A Good Intro to NetBS
"...why is this such a big deal?"
Well, you point out something that is a very big deal that I hadn't realized:
Big Mac didn't take five years to plan and implement. Over four years less, I think.
Time is money. Isn't that a big deal? It would be a big deal to me if it was my time and my money.
Thanks for pointing this out -- I really didn't know the development time for Earth Simulator.
--Richard
Well, obviously there was a bit of 'greasing each other's palms', at least in the sense that they shifted a whole TON of G5 boxes off to this project, leaving a lot of pre-order customers high-and-dry and pissed off. Surely some of us still remember that controversey from awhile ago here.
For VA Tech this may be an intellectual pursuit. For Apple it's obviously a marketing stunt.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Just like Slashdot then.
I'm ready to show up to the Mac OS Refund Rally.
I even volunteer to be the tool wearing the Darth Vader mask.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Thank you very much for the information. I guess that is a part of the slashcode? Either way, I will make sure whenever I post a link to use the correct html to prevent that from happening.
My first thought when I heard about the 1100 VT deal was that when g5 xServes are available, VT will replace the PowerMac cluster and distribute the 1100 over the campus.
Any rumor of that?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Apple builds outside, but they seem to do most of their R&D in America. Dell, in my experience, does just the opposite excepting their apparent comparatively low amount of R&D: they do their construction in Round Rock, but more or less stick together the innovations of others. The last thing Dell actually invented that I can recall is their business model. And new ways (e.g. flaps) for a computer to collect dust bunnies unbeknownst to the owner.
I enjoyed the video, but it got me thinking about MS's beowulf clustering. I know they released the software for it about two years back, but I've never heard anything about it since. It obviously doesnt hold a candle to the tried-and-true options like Scyld and such, but it'd be interesting to know some specs on their performance. I doubt we'll see this anytime soon as I don't see anyone building a large cluster saying "Let's put Windows on it!"
D
Why should it be modded down if it applies? The point of moderation is so people can switch to articles of 3 or higher and get good comments on an article. If the post is informative who cares who wrote it or when? When attribution is polite, I think modding down hurts things far worse. It's not as if they can collect Karma anymore.
What attribution? There was no attribution on this post. If the poster had said: "hey there's an interesting and relevant posting about this in another thread" and provided a link, I'd be grateful. Plagarising someone else's work is deceitful and self-aggrandizing. I for one don't value input from plagarists.
Besides in this case the plagarised post wasn't relevant to the article and therefore wasn't informative.
Sailing over the event horizon
That is one of the coolest-looking datacenters I've ever seen.
Our DC has regular fluorescent lights, and the NOC gets really uppity about it when we turn off all the lights, lay down some soft blue floorlighting, and turn on some Wagnerian New Age inspirational music in the background. Some shit about OSHA or something.
Well screw them, I'm moving my boxes to VA Tech !
Industrial design is to mechanical and electrical engineering as architecture is to civil engineering.
Industrial design is actually making a good looking fully functional product from the barebones the engineers have put together. It is part of the design of most consumer products and many people have careers in industrial design.
Industrial design is a fundamental part of the product design phase of everything from an coffee makers to a car. In fact both these are good examples of where good industrial design works.
Take the coffee maker, its function is pretty simple, but people actually coordinate their appliances with their kitchens, therefore the kettle has to look good and often will follow a particular style or trend in interior design to suit a particular market. The style and how it is intergrated into the design and function of the kettle is purely the work of an industrial designer.
Take a car interior, if purely functional without thought to aesthetics or ergonimics it would no doubt look a lot like the cockpit of a racing car, bare surface with simply toggle switches. So how do you get all those colour matched interiors, with ergonomic well placed switches for the A/C and stereo and a comfortable seating position etc. Well good industrial designers (though they tend to have a different job titles in the car industry).
Its been with us for a long time, take for instance such things as the beutiful art deco objects from the twenties, the height of which I think is the design of the ill fated line of luxury cars by Cord (ill fated as 1929 was not a good time to start a luxury car company). Wonderful looking looking masterworks of art-deco design.
Apple does the same thing for computers, combines good engineering (both in the software and hardware) with top notch design that both looks good and increases ease of use. They are the best computer company at doing this at the moment, and one of the best companies generally.
You clearly lack any concept of irony. Thanks for replying twice as an AC.
FOAD.
karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go.
It runs on 10.2 actually.
Yeah, that was before Steve Jobs had fully taken over and turned things around.
How many people think that super computer centres like this, with their reasonably cheap cost should be created in more places?
Um, me? How about my place. Just need someone to pick up the tab and pay for the electricity. I'll be happy to handle the rest.
Saying that OS X (client) comes free with every new mac is like saying that the tires come free with every new car. You pay for them, they're just not a line item on the invoice.
Was the only one who read that as "Look inside the Vagina" and then soon realize in no way could vaginas have any relation whatsoever to slashdot news?
"Apple doesn't place a giant markup on its products. They put a lot of money into product and industrial design. Therefore, Apple computer's cost more."
Wrong. Anyone who has sold computers or has industry experience will probably let you in on a little secret: there is a tiny markup in computers. Period. Money is made in accessories and service plans.
And for (hopefully the last time)Macintoshes are not more expensive! This point has been made many many times on Slashdot. But to make it one more time (IANAMU [I am not a Mac User]):
$6,174.00
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
4GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) - 4x1GB
2x250GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
56k V.92 internal modem
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse - U.S. English
Mac OS X - U.S. English
$6,634
Dell Precision Workstation 650
2 xIntel(R) Xeon(TM) Processor,3.06GHz,512K Cache
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional
Hyper-Threading feature preset to "ON."
Memory: 4GB,DDR266 SDRAM Memory,NECC
Keyboard: Entry Level, PS/2, No Hot Keys
Mouse: PS/2,Dell, 2 button w/no scroll
Monitor: No Monitor Option
Graphics Cards: nVidia, Quadro NVS 280, 64MB, dual monitor VGA capable
Speakers: Internal Chassis Speaker
Productivity Software: Dell Precision Workstation
4X DVD+RW/+R AND 16XDVD-ROM,DVD Decode/Sonic SE(for Professional Authoring) DRWDV4X
2x250GB SATA, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache(TM) SARC RAID
Floppy Drive: 3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive
So what was that about macintoshes being more expensive?
(Note I had to reformat the Dell Quote so that it would look ok)
Wow..I just think VA Tech purchase just broke the all time sales record for all of Apple's stupid anal retentive looking mall stores.
http://loudcity.net - Keeping Internet Radio Legal, Afford
Somebody is going to complain about the Mac only including a one-button mouse, I just know it. :-P
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
***********
Infamous is defined as "having an exceedingly bad reputation" or "notorious".
How is this supercomputer notorious or do you just mean "famous"?
Does it seem hypocritical that this V-T supercomputer runs on Linux
:) )
Big Mac runs on OSX, which is based on FreeBSD. not Linux.
according to apple [apple.com], as well as in the keynote--available as a quicktime stream on apple's website (sorry). while apple loves to exaggerate, they probably don't lie (except about the power of the G5
hehe.
-- designer
Industrial design is FAR from a buzz word. It is a GIANT industry. That chair your sitting on right now, that desk that's in front of you, they keyboard your typing on, the glasses you wear (if you wear them), the car you drive, the tooth brush you use, and the monitor your looking at were all designed by an industrial designer or firm.
Heck, just about every product you can buy, from a pen to a car, was probably designed by an industrial designer or a design firm that specialized in industrial / product design.
Really, the only industrial designers that don't actually get called "industrial designers' are architects.
Industrial design is real and probably affects you more then you think.
http://www.idsa.org/
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Out of the top 5 super computers... there is 1 self-made.
Out of the top 10... 1 self-made.
Out of the top 50... 1 self-made.
This speaks volumes. Apple didn't come in and build this thing for them. They dumped a few trucks with 1,100 computers at their door and VA Tech built it.
Personally, I'd like to know how many they got that were DOA. Any?
http://windows.scares.us
The OS X license may be included with the hardware, but Apple charges for point upgrades. $100 for 10.2, $100 for 10.3. I don't think VT will be paying retail if they were to upgrade all their nodes, but they also don't necessarily need the latest and greatest features in 10.3 or the next point release.
I'm sure he knows his stuff, but this seemed like just about the most assinine justification for a supercomputer design that I've ever heard. Thinking back (I just watched this during Jobs' keynote), I can't remember ever hearing what exactly they were planning to use this for. I know it'll get put to a lot of research uses, but maybe they could have talked about some of those. As it stands, the only thing I know this will be used for is really, really, really fast spam filtering.
I assume its application somehow involves simulation of cows or chicken-feed molecules?
This supercomputer was built by volunteers, so the cost is not something that can be reproduced easily.
Why? Were the volunteers and anyone who would consider volunteering for such a thing taken out at night and shot or something?
Hell, if some local university/company/government wanted to build a system like this and there was a newspaper article about it, I'd be very curious. If I found they were offering volunteer positions who get to connect loads of really cool hardware and have free pizza and coke like VT offered... hot damn, where do I sign up?
Seriously, I think volunteers for this sort of thing are rather easy to come by. In fact, you'd be surprised how easy it is to find volunteers in general, especially if you spin it the right way. If you're a jedi master of spin (or just lucky), you can get them to pay you for the priviledge.
Random and weird software I've written.
DELL
Intel(R) Celeron(R) Processor at 2.4GHz
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition
256MB Shared DDR SDRAM at 333MHz
40GB ATA/100 Value Hard Drive
48x CD-ROM Drive
DVD+RW Drive
17" monitor $399 after $100 rebate
Apple
256MB SDRAM - 1 DIMM
40GB Ultra ATA drive
Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
1GHz PowerPC G4
$850 after rebate (DELL x 2)
welcome back my reality- where dropping 6 grand for a computer is simply not an option!
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
OTOH, if you take Linpack/SPEC scores by people other than apple, the dell will stomp the G5...so that effects the price performace curve.
BULLSHIT. MS purchased $150M of NON-VOTING STOCK in Apple. Apple didn't need the $150M at the time, really, it didn't. They still had $2B in cash at the time.
Rumor has it that the cash was to settle some patent infringment issues and another bit of payment that Apple demanded of MS for Apple dropping their claims was that MS had to commit to 5 years of development for Mac Office.
MS also had to hold the stock for two or more years. MS did so and made a shitload of money.
--Mike
It is amazing how ignorant people are to how much mark-up there are in computers.
... trust me.
I sell computers for a living, including Apple. I sell in very large quantities, to very large organizations.
Apple computers, along with Dell and HP/Compaq have tremendous internal markups. Upwards in the 30% range. The usual "5-10%" people talk about are the reseller markups, not the manufacturer markups.
The money is in accessories for resellers, not manufacturers. Get it right.
Also, Virginia Tech bought those machines at an excellent discount (compared to what other people get), but nothing extra-ordinary. Don't ever think ANYONE is getting $5,000 G5's for $4,000. That does not happen, ever. Even for orders of 5,000 machines. Literally, even not for orders of 5,000 machines
Make no mistake, Apple does not sell the majority of their products. And make no mistake, Apple's bread and butter are educational institutions. Virginia Tech got their money worth, but Apple made a pretty penny.
Now put to rest these base-less comments.
Yes, but that's not a relevant answer to "Trurl's Machine's" question.
Terra Soft (YDL) do NOT sell any Macs without MacOS. Neither am I aware of anybody else doing so.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
PC's, Apples, who cares. What made all this stuff possible, both technically and economically, is Infiniband. What is Infiniband? Well, think of all those special purpose, packet switched data buses and high speed networks of the past (mucho $$) and make them an industry standard (less $$) and you've got infiniband. Blows 10GB ethernet away.
That's what all the HPC (high performance computing) guys have been using to glue their clusters together. See www.infinibandta.org for more info.
Will Infiniband make it to a server near you? Only time and the economy will tell.
well yeah, but look - the dell comes with a TWO BUTTON MOUSE!!!!!!!
that makes up for the difference, at least.
Where's Robin Hood? We could kinda really use him now.
Too late, it's already ported, and fact deeply integrated.
Maybe they can port COM to Windows next? :-)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
as you said in your post, vt wanted the publicity. is there evidence that apple won't honor requests from companies not wanting publicity? i doubt that apple is giong to turn down cash just because they can't turn a large order into a marketing opportunity.
It's called a Family Pack... $200 for up to 5... (and that's w/o the academic discount)... That supercomputer is one big family, aint it? ("Big" being quite an understatement.)
Apple does have a hard time competing at the lower end, but it's not quite as clear cut as posted.
For one thing, the DELL configured has some worse components than the Apple - video controller, gigabit ethernet, etc. Matching the configurations makes things closer, but but as long as you compare low-end PC towers to low-end Mac towers, Mac still comes off worse.
But then do you even need a tower if you are looking at that level of config? Start configuring those systems against an iMac or eMac (and matching the type of display - so that means flat panel on a DVI connection to compare to iMac), and the price gets a lot closer.
The big difference is that there are more options at the low-end on PCs. If you want a cheap box, with reasonable processing power, have no real interest in the display quality, and wish to connect it to an existing monitor, you can get it.
Great if you want to run artificial benchmarks all day, not so great if you want to do some work.
Tests using 'real' applications are generally quite favourable to the G5, although some specific applications are significantly faster on PCs.
But then performance is as much reliant on the compiler as it is on the machine. PCs have had better optimizing compilers for longer, and chances are that people are using them. Tests of IBM's compiler for the PowerPCs have shown it much faster than other Mac compilers (ie. similar sort of performance boost from using GCC, as using Intel's processor is instead of GCC on the PC).
Of course, that's rather irrelevant to the user - what matters is real app performance. But as already said, that isn't looking too bad for the G5, and as the compilers progress and get used routinely, it's likely to get better for Macs (providing the hardware development keeps pace).
Yep! Microsoft announced the new Office 2004 for Mac at the MacWorld expo yesterday. Among the new features are toolbars that fade to transparent when not actively being used, so they don't eat up your available screen space, and new "fit to page" features in Excel, ensuring all your pie charts and graphs, etc. don't end up crossing between 2 seperate pages when printed out.
In fact, the MS rep made a point to comment that "Microsoft brought Word and Excel to the Mac before we ever wrote a Windows version."
Microsoft has also purchased VirtualPC from Connectix, and has VirtualPC 7.0 coming out for the Mac in the next few months - with full G5 processor support added. So yes, MS has plenty of reason to be purchasing Apple G5 computers!
thats exactly what I was geting at. People (mac-heads) gripe at those who complain that Apples are more expensive. Well, for the average consumer (web surfing, e-mail, word processing) they are!!!
you show me any consumer who needs Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 with 4 GB of ram, I'll show you 100,000,000 people who don't.
seriously, I've got an 800 MHz pentium III with 512MB RAM and I can watch a dvd, burn a cd, listen to mp3's, have MS Visual Studio.NET and NetBeans open working on 2 different projects, host Oracle, SQLServer, and mySQL and the postgreSQL client, and be browsing on several web browsers for where the hell I went wrong with my code... AT THE SAME TIME.
its great bragging rights to have a dual 2 GHz Mac with 4 GHz RAM... but that is a fscking unrealistic comparison. Really now.
Here's to finally giving Bush his exit strategy in November
yeah, I was in a hurry and fogot to hit the HTML formatted thing to Plain Text
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
So there are 1100 superdrives in the VT super computer right? Wonder if they'd like to let me have one since they probably wont be using it at all...
That's not quite what I was saying.
You are right that most consumers don't need Dual 2Ghz G5's. But that doesn't make the cheapest Dell PC's the right choice either - even if it has the power to fulfil their actual needs.
Because I can point to many consumers that would choose to have a small, rugged laptop (with decent battery life). Or that would choose to have a flat panel screen. That would pay a bit extra to know that they can just plug their camera in without having to install drivers. To have firewire ports for their camcorders. For whom the iApps have 'value'. Who would actually just pay a bit more to have something that looks cool.
Those $399 Dell boxes are more suited as your 'bread and butter' business box - for people that type up letters and answer emails, and for whom graphics performance, sound, etc. are irrelevant.
Goddamnit. Editors, please look this work up! infamous adj. notoriously bad; having a bad reputation; abominable, (in ancient law) deprived of all of some right of a citizen on account of a serious crime. not more famous, extra famous, or really, really beyond famous. And yes, I did quote the O.E.D. the biggest, snottiest dictionary you can use to crush a car.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
They are called grad students. They even pay to be there.
....claiming G5's are slow ...how do these drones explain the fact Big Mac is #3 fastest super computer in the world?
I'm definitely not in the Wintel camp, but this is actually very easy to explain: one thing is the computing power of a given CPU and another is the scalability of a cluster stacked of many CPUs. MacOS X scales very well, but nobody ever denied that, not even the most zealous Wintel zealots.
what are they doing with it? we all here the happy talk that it could be used for this and that, but are they. just how many people in the world are actually doing research that requires a system like this? on average how many free cycles is this computer wasting daily? will it ever be fully utilized? by whom and for what?
let us ponder for a moment these questions of supply and demand.
the more that i think about this, the more this seems very much like a boondoggle. I don't begrudge its creators their innovation, but i do question the usefulness of that innovation, but the more that i think about it, this investment seems somewhat misguided until we actually see people using it and see the real outcomes of that research.
My point is that the video was silly; a point you don't refute. Instead you justify Apple patronizing its partisans -- make no mistake, that video was for Macworld, not Joe Blow. It was dumbing things down for the most technically sophisticated mass audience Apple is likely to produce a video for. With this sort of attitude, how am I supposed to take seriously any of the apple camp's claims to technical superiority? If Apple is feeding us this sort of junk argument, how can I take any of their supposedly objective technical claims seriously?
This goes to the root of the problem with Apple: they assume they know what's best for you. Fortunately, they usually do. Their interface design is great and they consistently make good hardware choices. But if you are going to make choices for the consumer, I think you need to be open about why you made those choices. And putting out ignorant junk like "we make the only supercomputing platform that you can check email on" is just nonsense any way you slice it (I've got Pine going on my Cray upstairs, and let me tell you, it hauls -- okay, not really).
I didn't mean to insult Dr. Varajarajan (he's your faculty adviser, right? it's okay, you can tell us). I am sure he went on at length about the system and Apple cut out all of the worthwhile parts. That doesn't make the email comment any less funny, though.
Yep, Mac picked the best business model I guess, that's why Microsoft and Apple started at roughly the same time, and Microsoft is worth a little more than 500 billion dollars, and apple is worth about 4.7 billion dollars. Seems like one company might be doing better than the other.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Yeah, and RedHat is really just Linux.. all they did was compile Midnight Commander.
Give me a break. This wasn't just a X11 clone.. this is an entire user interface. And user interface is everything in the desktop world.
Moreover, your statement is just plain wrong.. even putting together someone else's open source pieces into a coherent, stable, maintable, expandible OS requires pretty big effort. That's what all the Linux distros do for a living.
I did just what you suggest... and I found the the largest of the three mov streams crashed mplayer, but the medium sized one didn't. Hmmm...
Did you not here Jobs at the Keynote? It came with (as will all the new Xserve Raids ) an unlimited License- It isn't Microsoft after all.
Love, Stalfros All the other girls are the stars, you are the Northern Lights. - Josh Ritter
Amen!
Love, Stalfros All the other girls are the stars, you are the Northern Lights. - Josh Ritter
The grandparent is talking about computers for end users, which is NOT the topic of discussion at the moment. It would be pointless and silly to use those computers for nodes of a supercomputer. It should be modded offtopic in my opinion, not troll, but at the moment it's modded "interesting" for reasons I don't see.
Dual Opteron 2U Server:
Two AMD Opteron 246 CPUs each w/ 1mb cache
MSI K8D Master-F MS-9131 dual motherboard w/ 2 NICs
4096mb PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM, Registered ECC, 4 DIMMs
3ware Escalade 8506-4 SATA RAID controllre, 4 ports
2 x WD 2500JD Caviar 250gb SATA drive, 7200RPM
ATI Rage XL graphics card
2U rackmount chassis with sliding mounting rail kit, 420W power
Teac 1.44mb floppy drive
Built-in two Gigabit network cards
Linux pre-configured, w/ CDs/Docs
Two year replacement warranty
Price: $4917.00 (plus shipping)
If you really want a DVD/CD drive, you can get one in the above for another $250, but I don't see why a supercomputer node would need one.
To match those specs even more closely (except for a better graphics card and the faster Opteron processors, or course) here's this:
Dual Opteron Workstation:
Two AMD Opteron 246 CPUs each w/ 1mb cache
Tyan S2875ANRF Tiger K8W motherboard w/ Gbit, FireWire
IO port: 2 x USB, 1 x Parallel, 1 x Serial, 1 x PS2 keyboard, 1 x PS2 mouse
4096mb PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM, Registered ECC, 4 DIMMs
3ware Escalade 8506-4 SATA RAID controllre, 4 ports
2 x WD 2500JD Caviar 250gb SATA drive, 7200RPM
NEC ND-1300A DVD-RW/DVD+RW/CD-RW drive, ATAPI
nVidia Quadro4 750 XGL graphics card, 128mb, dual head w/ DVI
Teac 1.44mb floppy drive
Pedestal case with 11 drive bays, 450W power supply
Logitech 3 button mouse
IBM 104-key PS/2 keyboard
Built-in two Gigabit network cards
Linux pre-configured, w/ CDs/Docs
MS Windows XP Professional installed for multi-boot, w/ CD/docs
Price: $5581.00
Yes, the Mac is more expensive for this type of system.
SETI AT HOME.
--- Nothing is secure.
Software
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
Check it out here
There's a difference between "not doing well" and "not doing as well as Microsoft."
Apple and Microsoft aren't technically in the same market. Apple = Hardware, Microsoft = Software.
--Mike
Actually apple makes software, their OS, and several other products
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Why would ANYONE waste a mod point on that little comment?
Strange shit is afoot at slashdot.org...
That was classic intercourse!