Specs of Virginia Tech Apple Power Mac supercomputer posted. 4 Terabytes RAM and 176 Terabytes hard drive space.

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Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,048
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See here & here.

1100 Dual CPU G5 2.0 GHz machines
4 GB RAM per box (total 4.4 TB)
160 GB HD space each (total 176 TB)
"High end graphics cards" - why I don't know - I'm guessing Radeon 9600 Pro since that's the stock config.
4 head nodes
1 management node
Mac OS X
C/C++ compilers are IBM xlc and GCC 3.3
Fortran 95/90/77 compilers are IBM xlf and NAGWare
24 Mellanox Infiniband switches
Cisco Gigabit Ethernet switches
Liebert liquid cooling system - 2+ million BTUs
Custom designed racks

$5.2 million - The weird part was Apple was the cheapest. See below:

Slide Four
Choosing the Right Architechture
- cost vs. performance (purely)
- total cost $5.2 million includes system itself, memory, storage, and communication fabrics
- one of the cheapest systems of its kind

Slide Five
Architectural Options [or something like that]
- Dell - too expensive [one of the reasons for the project being so "hush hush" was that dell was exploring pricing options during bidding]
- Sun (sparc) - required too many processors, also too expensive
- IBM/AMD (opteron) - required twice the number of processors and was twice the price in the desired configuration; had no chassis available
- HP (itanium) - ditto
- Apple (IBM PPC970) - system available with chassis for lowest price
 
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Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,048
1,679
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This line kinda surprised me:
- Why not linux? Not enough support.
Click to expand...
I also find it interesting that it would have taken twice as many Opterons (at twice the price) too. Doesn't quite make sense to me though. I would have guessed that an Opteron 244 (1.8 GHz) was as fast as a G5 2.0.
 
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Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,048
1,679
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jfano, I guess you already have a supercomputer in your basement? Congrats man.
 
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digitalsm

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2003
5,253
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Originally posted by: Eug
This line kinda surprised me:
- Why not linux? Not enough support.
Click to expand...
I also find it interesting that it would have taken twice as many Opterons (at twice the price) too. Doesn't quite make sense to me though. I would have guessed that an Opteron 244 (1.8 GHz) was as fast as a G5 2.0.
Click to expand...

I dont know what the fvck they are smoking. The G5 is not faster than the Opteron.
 
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Sunner

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: digitalsm
Originally posted by: Eug
This line kinda surprised me:
- Why not linux? Not enough support.
Click to expand...
I also find it interesting that it would have taken twice as many Opterons (at twice the price) too. Doesn't quite make sense to me though. I would have guessed that an Opteron 244 (1.8 GHz) was as fast as a G5 2.0.
Click to expand...

I dont know what the fvck they are smoking. The G5 is not faster than the Opteron.
Click to expand...

And you know exactly what kind of programs they run then, I suppose?

You can probably find workloads where a G5 is twice the speed of an equally clocked Opteron, and vice versa.
Take the old RC5-64 for example, G4's dominated everything out there, and the K5 was the fastest x86 in terms of IPC.

One thing Im pretty sure they won't be doing is playing games on it though.
 
beatle

beatle

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2001
5,661
5
81
Sweet. I'm glad they're going to put all those Macs to good use. Last time they made a giant Mac purchase they filled the Math Emporium with new G4s! :p

beatle, class of 02 ;)
 
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Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,048
1,679
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Not to mention you're not going to find Windows on a Mac.
Click to expand...
MS Virtual PC for Mac OS X. The current version doesn't work on the G5 though. On the G4 it works fine for almost anything unless it requires a 3D video card (like 3DMark or video games) or if it makes direct calls to the hardware (like a firmware flasher). Personally, I just use MS Remote Desktop to take over my XP box from my laptop when I'm sitting in the living room. Not that any of this could be run on a supercluster though of course. :p

I dont know what the fvck they are smoking. The G5 is not faster than the Opteron.
Click to expand...
Sez who? Depends on what you're testing. On some stuff the Opteron runs like crap, even if it's blistering fast on other stuff. And IBM's estimate of the 1.8 GHz G5's SPECfp puts it in the range of the Opteron 242 1.6 GHz. Thus, I'm guessing that the SPECfp of a 2.0 GHz G5 is in the range of an Opteron 244 1.8 GHz.
 
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sman789

Banned
May 6, 2003
1,038
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I'm a student at VT, they don't have it assembled yet. They have em all sitting at a off campus "math on computers" building.
 
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Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,048
1,679
126
Originally posted by: sman789
I'm a student at VT, they don't have it assembled yet. They have em all sitting at a off campus "math on computers" building.
Click to expand...
:camera:? (Esp. once it's going up.) ;)
 
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MercenaryForHire

Lifer
Jan 31, 2002
40,819
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Originally posted by: Eug
Originally posted by: sman789
I'm a student at VT, they don't have it assembled yet. They have em all sitting at a off campus "math on computers" building.
Click to expand...
:camera:? (Esp. once it's going up.) ;)
Click to expand...

/rents U-Haul and starts driving ... Free G5s is good G5s!

No, seriously. Have they given any thought to what would happen if the machines were stolen or destroyed by fire? Store them all in an off-campus building. Brilliant.

- M4H
 
BoberFett

BoberFett

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
37,562
9
81
Originally posted by: Eug
Not to mention you're not going to find Windows on a Mac.
Click to expand...
MS Virtual PC for Mac OS X. The current version doesn't work on the G5 though. On the G4 it works fine for almost anything unless it requires a 3D video card (like 3DMark or video games) or if it makes direct calls to the hardware (like a firmware flasher). Personally, I just use MS Remote Desktop to take over my XP box from my laptop when I'm sitting in the living room. Not that any of this could be run on a supercluster though of course. :p
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm sure emulated Windows would turn out some pretty impressive gaming benchmarks.
rolleye.gif


Must you turn everything into a Mac v Windows debate? I simply pointed out that 3DMark is a PC product, and you whipped out the links faster than a Jehovahs Witness can pull out a pamphlet. Besides, why would anybody want to run Windows on a Mac? I thought OSX was the be all end all of operating systems?
 
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sman789

Banned
May 6, 2003
1,038
0
0
Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Originally posted by: Eug
Originally posted by: sman789
I'm a student at VT, they don't have it assembled yet. They have em all sitting at a off campus "math on computers" building.
Click to expand...
:camera:? (Esp. once it's going up.) ;)
Click to expand...

/rents U-Haul and starts driving ... Free G5s is good G5s!

No, seriously. Have they given any thought to what would happen if the machines were stolen or destroyed by fire? Store them all in an off-campus building. Brilliant.

- M4H
Click to expand...

i'll try to get a pic now....heading up their to take some quizzes
 
Eug

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,048
1,679
126
Yeah, I'm sure emulated Windows would turn out some pretty impressive gaming benchmarks.
rolleye.gif
Click to expand...
It doesn't run 3D apps, as I said earlier.

Must you turn everything into a Mac v Windows debate? I simply pointed out that 3DMark is a PC product, and you whipped out the links faster than a Jehovahs Witness can pull out a pamphlet.
Click to expand...
What's the debate? You pointed out the obvious that 3DMark is a PC product, in response to somebody's joke. So, I posted the MS Windows on Mac products. Note the smiley.

Besides, why would anybody want to run Windows on a Mac? I thought OSX was the be all end all of operating systems?
Click to expand...
Well, it comes free with Office now, so it's just a bonus. The people who I see who use it the most are the web designers who are creating web pages on their Macs. To test their work to make sure it works with Internet Explorer on Windows they could either buy a PC or else use VPC. It's esp. helpful if they're on the road with a Mac laptop. Another big group I hear about who use it are *nix types with Mac laptops but who do some Windows development.

i'll try to get a pic now....heading up their to take some quizzes
Click to expand...
Good luck on the quizzes, and looking forward to the pix. :)
 
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