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Virginia Tech Upgrade: PowerMac G5 to Xserve G5
An anonymous reader writes "Virginia Tech officially announced that they will be migrating their G5 Supercomputer from PowerMac G5s to Xserves.
According to the article, the Xserve G5s will reduce power consumption, heat production and decrease the system size by a factor of three. The pricing of the upgrade is still being determined, and according to Srinidhi Varadarajan, they are working on getting "very good homes" for the PowerMac G5s which will be replaced."
would be to reward some VT Computer Science majors.
get an A in any programming class, take home a G5.
when i heard about this the first thing i thought was "they just it up and running and now they are doing an upgrade?" i'm not in the cluster world does this happen often? does anyone else think that it came too soon? Or is apple giving them another deep discount to keep an Mac based computer #3 on the supercomputer chart?
I wonder if the lower power PowerPC 970FX used in the Xserve has superior performance to the ordinary 970 used in the PowerMac G5...
;-)
It would also be interesting to know if the 970FX has suitable energy saving modes and a low enough power consumption to be used in a G5 PowerBook
It may seem like a waste to upgrade a system only four months old, but the reduced power consumption will save some dollars in the long term. By ditching the towers, they also save a boatload of space...
Where they can use some some of that extra money to purchase more nodes...
To put in all that extra space...
How many more nodes would it take to surpass number 2 on the list? Or possibly give number 1 a run for its money?
I think VT may be on to something here.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
They can toss them about the network and use them as a distributed compile/render/$distributed_task farm.
Absolutely an impressive school. 10 years ago, they were a joke. Now they built a national reputation via their football team, so people have heard of them, and projects like this put them on the map. When I looked at schools, they never entered the equation. If I was looking at engineering schools today, I'm sure that I would end up applying there.
This is a school with great self promotion and is going to go places. Unlike places like MIT, they don't sit on their Laurels, they are exploding.
I expect that in 20 years, they'll be considered one of the elite engineering schools. Kinda neat to have your college degree appreciate in value because the school gets better. I can't imagine that you don't get a decent engineering education at any engineering focused school, and this research project is a brilliant PR stunt.
Alex
Some people are like "Why would they upgrade from dual 2 Ghz G5 desktops, to dual 2 Ghz G5 rackmount servers??"
They won't be dual 2 Ghz G5 rackmount servers.. VTech is going to do the same thing they did when the G5's were released.. get first dibs on new inventory as soon as the new rackmount servers are released - the new 2.3Ghz rackmount servers.
Apple knows what's in it's product pipeline, and I guarantee you that they are in talks with Virginia Tech about offering their new xserves that are *yet* to be announced. You honestly think that Virgina Tech had no idea about the nee G5's prior to Steve Job's and his keynote? They are planning on upgrading their supercomputer, and they are going to be making it FASTER, and Cooler (bad pun.. I know)
Apple's marketing line is going to be: "Look, Look Not only is the 3rd fastest computer on earth powered by our G5's, but it also is run on our new XServes.. You need mission critical hardware? No problem. We build supercomputers!"
-Buddha wears grass shoes
What I never understood is why someone like IBM didn't come along and cluster 10,000 dual P4 nodes together for fun to get on the top spot. I'm sure they have the inventory to write that off.
That would be ASCI White, which is currently #8 on the top 500. It's an 8192-cpu Power3 machine, and they didn't do it just for fun. It was #1 on the top 500 in Nov 2000.
Also, #10 on the top 500 is a 1920-node IBM Xeon 2.4Ghz cluster, but why should IBM use Intel processors when they make their own?
Mozilla
...how loud the Xserves are compared to the G5's? I can't imagine the decibels in a room full of them. One thing they don't mention in the article, and possibly another reason to upgrade to the Xserves, is the use of the Server Manager software. This software doesn't work on the PowerMac G5's because it doesn't have the sensors built in that the Xserves do. Not being that keen on cluster arrangements, I wonder if they have another product in place now that does the same thing with the PowerMacs?
Money not found! A)bort, R)etry, D)eclare Bankruptcy
"The pricing of the upgrade is still being determined..."
<drool>man, when i saw this, i couldnt help but be jealous of that kind of budget. my first thought was, "must be nice..."</drool>
<shameless_plea> considering our (small, private, broke) school is using REALLY old hardware, i could definitely find a home for them. we are still trying to make use of old P1's with 32 MB RAM (hell, i got one that we installed Win2K on! it's kind of a joke to even turn the thing on), and a lot of our hardware keeps dying. plus, i would love nothing more than to get MS off ALL of our boxen and move towards Mac/Linux. </shameless_plea>
--krewe
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
For those who keep wondering aloud if they'll be able to improve their ranking, due to ECC, 2.3 GHz G5s, etc...
#3: VA Tech: 10.28 TFlops
#2: Los Alamos: 13.88 TFlops
#1: EarthL 35.86 TFlops
So, even if they spent 3x as much and filled up the now 2/3 empty room *and* scaled linearly (which they won't, won't, and definitely won't), they *still* wouldn't reach #1. #2, however, might be within reach, if they go to 2.3GHz and the ECC is a huge help.
Now that they more or less know where they'll wind up and there's no point in being secretive, I'd love to see them show what one box does on its own, then 2, then 5, then 10, then 50, then 100, then 200, 500, and finally 1100.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Damn, I guess you know something that no one else (publicly) currently does. Xserves are only at 2.0 GHz, as of 11:30 AM EST 1/27/04.
Of course, that could change in the next hour...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Okay, I'm the friend that suggested this. I'm trying to figure out how the post rated a funny. It's a serious suggestion. Those PowerMacs were a part of history, and should be memorialized somehow. Laser engraving a few words, putting Dr. Varadarajan's signature and numbering each of the cases would be a nice touch. If VT then put them on eBay they could recoup some of their cost and actually make something off of them, cause we all know they didn't pay retail.
It's obvious TV already has plans for them put I do feel the cases should be somehow marked to acknowledge the role those Power Macs played in history.