Virginia Tech har bestämt sig

Det som tidigare bara var ett rykte har nu blivit verklighet. Virginia Tech har bestämt sig och byter ut sina G5:or mot XServer.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University will upgrade its supercomputer that uses Apple Computer Inc. (NasdaqNM:AAPL - News)'s PowerMac G5 computers with Apple's recently introduced Xserve G5 servers that have two chips in each box, the university said on Tuesday.

The new system, which went online toward the end of last year and which Virginia Tech said was the most powerful supercomputer at any university in the world at the time, will be completed by May.

By moving to the thinner servers, the supercomputer will consume less power and generate less heat, said Srinidhi Varadarajan, assistant professor of computer science, college of engineering, at Virginia Tech.

"It cuts the system's size down by a factor of three," Varadarajan said. "The new system will take much less power and generate less heat and free up space."

The current supercomputer that uses 1,100 PowerMac G5 desktop computers occupies 3,000 square feet (280 sq metres). After the upgrade to 1,100 Xserve G5s, which Cupertino, California-based Apple announced earlier this month at its Macworld trade show, the system will occupy 1,000 square feet(93 sq metres).

Apple's G5 chips crunch 64 bits of data at a time, compared with the now-industry-standard of 32 bits found in the vast majority of personal computers and servers.

If laid on its side, the PowerMac G5 is about 7 inches (18 cm) tall. By comparison, the Xserve is about 1.75 inches (4.4 cm) high, said Alex Grossman, head of marketing for servers and storage for Apple.

"They're able to rack these in a much tighter and higher density manner," Grossman said.

The price of the upgrade has not yet settled on, but Varadarajan said it would be minimal compared to the cost of building a new supercomputer from scratch.

Asked what would become of the 1,100 PowerMac G5 computers being retired, Varadarajan said: "We're working on getting them very good homes."

Källa:
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040126/tech_virginiatech_apple_1.html

XServer G5 kan bli en storsäljare, hittade lite kompleterande information som pekar på detta. Följande ska ha kommit från Big Mac´s taleskvinna Lynn Nystrom.

Nystrom said federal agencies, including the Argonne National Lab, the National Security Agency, and NASA, are among those expressing interest in the supercomputer technology. She added that negotiations were underway with potential customers who could use the university's installation itself, or obtain rights to build their own supercomputer based on the university's technology.

In recent rankings of the world's supercomputers by the University of Tennessee, the Virginia Tech installation held third place, behind Japan's $250 million Earth Simulator Center and Hewlett-Packard's $215 million installation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The most eye-popping feature of Virginia Tech's “Big Mac” installation is its $7 million price tag.

Så med tanke på prislappen så står Apple sig väl i konkurensen.

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