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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."
*looks under desk*.. I'm sure I could find room for, oooh... a couple of hundred..
Does anyone know what the university got in return for allowing Apple to film the installation and staff for the Xserve promotional videos? A reduced price upgrade may have been part of the initial agreement
they are working on getting "very good homes" for the PowerMac G5s which will be replaced.
Can EBay be slashdotted? I guess we'll find out now!
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Is it like adopt a G5 day down at VT? Is there a background check or can I just pick up my tower and beat it to death once I walk outside with it?
To adopt one of those adorable little...
Heh.
Screw it, just gimme a G5!
Shinma
When it was first rumored that VT might replace its G5 boxes with Xserves, a friend of mine shared the idea that the pulled machines should be resold to the public, with some indication that they had been part of the cluster, perhaps a plaque or laser engraving noting that they had been included in the VT supercomputer. I bet those things would be bid up sky-high on eBay!
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why not have a few more Xserves, I mean they already have the infrastructure for that much heat/power/room, so why don't they supersize the Big Mac?
Bob
Now for all those people who droned on and on about how foolish VTech were for not getting stripped down boxes, here's the reason.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
would be to reward some VT Computer Science majors.
get an A in any programming class, take home a G5.
Bob
Imagine a beowulf cluster of th-- oh wait. DAMNIT!
--
The last digit of pi is four.
They've already covered their costs in publicity and research. Getting on the Top500.org and being ranked #3 is huge. Well worth the $5 million they spent.
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?
Not a G5 expert here...
I wonder if there is a processing gain acievable by doing this or of the motivation is purely power dissipation and space. If so, at the end of the day it seems like the power bill delta over the usable life of the computer wouldn't make the expense of the upgrade worthwhile (especially considering VT has an on campus power plant of their own). Wouldn't it make more sense to wait around for the 'next best thing' instead of the same thing in a different package? If it ain't broke, why fix it?
But I guess they want a super-computer the football team can be proud of...
Trust me, the university is not letting anything out of their hands that can't be obsoleted first. It's a state school so they have a pecking order. My first bet is a large majority ends up at the Empo' followed by professors (who are also looking to build a smaller farm), faculty, staff, other state schools, and if we are so fortunate (and this is really a long shot) you can scoop one auctioned[PURCH].
How is this Insightful? The Lead in stated the reasons as a less power consumption, less room needed, and less heat produced. Last I checked trying to save money on Electricity, Cooling and Floor space was simple good use of students tuition dollars.
Or a supercomputer that the football team can spell. "G5" is shorter than "Pentium".
--- Ban humanity.
"No offense, but after running thermal dynamics equations, your, how do you call it, 'leet' Photoshops skills are somewhat beneath me. I'm looking for something that will stretch my thinking, not bore me to tears. I don't think I'm right for you. Perhaps a Blueberry iMac would be more your speed. Yes, a beige G3 with 64 megs of ram and os 8.1 should handle your AOL sessions just fine. I'll continue my search. Thanks for your time."
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.
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
This was *more* than worth it for Virginia Tech, academically, scientifically, and economically.
They spent $5M to instantly catapult themselves to the forefront of high performance computing, which was successful. Now they're replacing the entire cluster with ECC on the cheap, and will be doing real work with it in no time. This is a coup for VT, plain and simple. No one will be #3 again on the Top 500 list for anything close to $5M anytime in the foreseeable future. (The Top 10 will soon be populated with even more $100M+ clusters.) Virginia Tech's gamble will pay off many more times over for Virginia Tech, the people of Virginia, and the federal taxpayers who helped pay for it. As you claim to be a professor (which I doubt), it surprises me that you're too dense to realize that. Remind me to steer clear of your "classes".
They became the #3 most powerful supercomputer site in the world, #2 in the US, and #1 in education - and the first academic site to break 10Tflops - for a pittance, and in accordance with all rules set forth by the Top 500 organization - and now can attract much more grant money to do even more research and become an even bigger contributor, instead of taking years and millions more dollars to do it.
The Top 500 list has always been about hype! Wake up! Bravo to Virginia Tech. The only "pity" here is that you're so ignorant and shortsighted.
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
They worked out how much it costs to build a top-three supercomputer from commodity parts at very low cost, while simultaneously getting a massive amount of publicity.
"The noble art of losing face will one day save the human race"---Hans Blix
...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
It does. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the power output of the 970FX chip was in the neighborhood of 15Watts, about 1/4 more than the current G4 'books. The watt number may be wrong, but the are definately only slightly more power-hungry than the current chips.
G5 PowerBooks are on the way!
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that Steve Job's himself had already said this in his Macworld Keynote. An excerpt from someone's notes:
Jobs talks about the G5 processor and Virginia Tech SuperComputer, who wanted "the first" 1,100 dual-2GHz Power Mac G5s. ("We pissed off a few people" getting them the first ones.") Cost them only $5.2 million and sending ripples through Supercomputer world. Jobs shows Virginia Tech Supercomputer video. It uses Infiniband networking; it took less than 3 weeks to assemble. Now in the top 3 Supercomputers. First academic machine to break the 10 teraflop barrier. The entire system runs on Mac OS X. Jobs says he expects to see a few more [Supercomputers] popping up hear and there
So VT is probably going to be THE FIRST to recieve G5 Xserve's.
Gorkman
XServe has it, G5 doesn't.
Space is finite, so reducing your space needs by 2/3rds and reducing your expensive air-conditioning budget by some amount is actually a huge argument in favor of upgrading. The Xserves are cheaper cycle for cycle than the Power Mac G5s, too.
The other issue: with 2/3rds of your space free, you can wait for faster G5s to appear and slot those in with very small amounts of disruption. Or a grant comes through for a $1,000,000 for more computers -- boom, you're done. No lengthy process of finding more space, spending more to build out a/c, etc.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Xserve G5 Cluster Node 2GHz DP/80GB/2xGigE/10Client
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
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Mac OS X Server, 10-seat License
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Unbelievable waste of a nice computer.
Will they even be selling them?
I don't know anything about VT, but how many computer labs could benefit from new G5's?
How about other departments? Do they have a need/use for them? If nothing else, put them on faculty desktops.
Then there's always the possibility of reselling them to the current students.
Because the next list in June 2004, and the one after it, and the one after that, will include many new very, very expensive clusters (some $100M+) with performance far, far beyond 10Tflops.
l ist_for_CPU.gif
So, yes, someone can build a 1101-G5 cluster right now, and be faster than VT's cluster. But they won't be on any list, and they definitely won't be anywhere near #3 on the next Top 500 list. And neither will VT.
That's why the whole VT #3 thing is the coup that it is: the timing was *perfect* for them to take the #3 spot for a mere $5.2M. The PR and grants they'll get *because of* that are more than worth it. That will never happen again for anywhere near that small an amount of money anytime soon.
See some of the new clusters that will be in the Top 10 on the next list:
http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/GIFs/TOP500_