Army Contractor To Build A 1566 Xserve Cluster

olePigeon (Wik) writes "MacCentral has an interesting article on a new computer cluster. From the article: 'Apple Computer Inc. will announce on Monday the sale of 1566 dual processor 1U rack-mount 64-bit Xserve G5 servers to COLSA Corp., which will be used to build what is expected to be one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. The US$5.8 million cluster will be used to model the complex aero-thermodynamics of hypersonic flight for the U.S. Army.'" alset_tech was one of the many readers to point to CNET's version of the story.

Comments

We're lacking troop strength/ Extended tours

[acomj]

I've don't know if you know anyone over there, but tours of duty in Iraq for almost all troops have been extended, for some multiple times. Clearly they're running kinda thin on troops, if we need a major deployment elsewhere....

From USA today
The 1st Armored Division, which arrived in Baghdad in the first week of May 2003, spent most of the past year in and around the Iraqi capital. Then, just as the division's 20,000 troops were about to head home, they were ordered to race south to counter the bloody insurgency of renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia. The Pentagon extended the division's tour by 90 days, until mid-July.

Re:We're lacking troop strength/ Extended tours

[YrWrstNtmr]

[disclaimer - I am retired USAF]
Stop-loss has been a recurring factor for years. During and after GulfWar I, Jan-Sep last year, just after Vietnam, and a few points in between.

Stop loss is to retain trained troops. It takes a looong time to bring a new service member to full combat/duty status. Systems and procedures have changed. Things are much more complex. A 2 year(?) draftee would see less than a year of effective use.

Re:Weapons don't excite me.

[nfotxn]

And if your medical system serves your citizens so well, why do many of the wealthier ones come down here when they need to get the best treatment? It's not just Canada, though... from all over the world people fly in from their wonderfully "progressive" state-run health care systems at home to be treated by our "horrible" and "broken" health care system or specialists here in the States. Actions like these speak louder than words and posturing.

That's a recent phenominon as a result of a foreign private interest looking to have public healthcare de-regulated. Much of what was publically funded before has become private so the system as it exists here in Canada presently is in transition. Over the last term of provincial government the public system was large dismantled in a effort to make it appear broken. Yet despite a reduciton of 6 billion dollars in funding healthcare here still works. The majority of people going to the USA were getting medical imaging done not major surgeries. Even in the USA diagnostics and imaging are expensive.

I wrote this post in haste orginally and apologise for the tone. To clarify witout getting too much further off topic private and public systems of healthcare tend not to co-exist well in the Canadian experience. For us in the industry it's well known that the influence from the US is a major political power even here. It makes us awfully resentful when companies from abroad railroad us by pressuring government to further cut funding in the face of increasing demand. Well of course we're going to start failing. Then to see the US defense budget as a blueprint for my country to come? No wonder we're more resentful than ever of our neighbours to the south. Our sovereignty has always been regarded as some sort of quaint and primitive custom.