Why would VT get to keep the old G5 Macs if it is a 1:1 exchange with Apple?
VT gets the new G5 Xserves
Apple gets the old G5 towers in exchange
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Xserve G5s to Replace PowerMacs in 'Big Mac'?
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VT gets the new G5 Xserves
Apple gets the old G5 towers in exchange
whew......
at least they won't be gobbling up the entire production run of the G5 revision when it gets announced.
i think Apple would be keen to see the VT cluster take outright honours in the "Fastest Computer EVVARRRRR" stakes.
at least they won't be gobbling up the entire production run of the G5 revision when it gets announced.
i think Apple would be keen to see the VT cluster take outright honours in the "Fastest Computer EVVARRRRR" stakes.
g4
why's everyone saying system-x is apple's first supercomputer? apple's had one since august of 99! want a supercomputer? buy a g4. not that a gflop is much anymore lol, but it was once. it even had freakin export restrictions. an apple supercomputer is nothing new. it's not a supercomputer anymore is it? if i were vt i wouldnt care about catching the earth simulator, because by the time they did, japan could have 1100 earth simulators in a cluster! what i'm waiting for is an ipod raid cluster! world's largest mp3 player, baby!
why's everyone saying system-x is apple's first supercomputer? apple's had one since august of 99! want a supercomputer? buy a g4. not that a gflop is much anymore lol, but it was once. it even had freakin export restrictions. an apple supercomputer is nothing new. it's not a supercomputer anymore is it?
if i were vt i wouldnt care about catching the earth simulator, because by the time they did, japan could have 1100 earth simulators in a cluster! what i'm waiting for is an ipod raid cluster! world's largest mp3 player, baby!homerjward said:why's everyone saying system-x is apple's first supercomputer? apple's had one since august of 99! want a supercomputer? buy a g4. not that a gflop is much anymore lol, but it was once. it even had freakin export restrictions. an apple supercomputer is nothing new. it's not a supercomputer anymore is it?
I am a small bit confused, what super computer from 99?
BeoVir said:I am a small bit confused, what super computer from 99?
the original powermac g4s and cubes were advertised as the worlds first consumer supercomputer or something like that. the g4 that youre probably reading this on is, in fact, a supercomputer by the standard of 1 gigaflop = supercomputer. (that standard was made up like a decade ago)
Industry often funds higher education
If apple is using Virginia Tech's sucess to test the supercomputer concept. Why wouldn't they give som R&D money to the university. As long as the code that gets written and tested gets back to apple eventually and the results of the efforts get published. Apple could get some tax breaks and publicity and R&D on the cheap. So, why wouldn't they get the first crack at the new hardware. Perhaps they have the 3ghz dualies who would tell? VT no, not if they wanted future funding and top secret technology. Apple, no not until they could boast of a big gain.
Makes sense to me. But, then again, I am sitting on the outside looking in?
http://www.cfr.vt.edu/
http://www.cfr.vt.edu/publicity/index.html
http://www.cfr.vt.edu/publicity/vtmagwinter03.html
If apple is using Virginia Tech's sucess to test the supercomputer concept. Why wouldn't they give som R&D money to the university. As long as the code that gets written and tested gets back to apple eventually and the results of the efforts get published. Apple could get some tax breaks and publicity and R&D on the cheap. So, why wouldn't they get the first crack at the new hardware. Perhaps they have the 3ghz dualies who would tell? VT no, not if they wanted future funding and top secret technology. Apple, no not until they could boast of a big gain.
Makes sense to me. But, then again, I am sitting on the outside looking in?
http://www.cfr.vt.edu/
http://www.cfr.vt.edu/publicity/index.html
http://www.cfr.vt.edu/publicity/vtmagwinter03.html
chaos86 said:
Yea, the deal was/is that computers fall under the designation of military ordinance (or something related) if they are fast enough. The idea is, we don't want to be selling F-16 or computers fast enough to help develop F-16s (or Nukes) to our enemies.
Prior to the release of the G4, the Government hadn't revised the definition of a "Supercomputer" for a long time. Supercomputers were regulated so they couldn't sold to any country that had arms restrictions in place. The old limit was 1GFlop. Since a G4 could sustain 1GFlop, it was a supercomputer according to the government. Not only could apple legally call it a supercomputer when it obviously wasn't, Apple was also not able to export the G4 to a number of countries.. I believe that included France for a period.
Congress revised the limit to, I believe, 50 GFlops.. which was fast for a single computer node back in 1999 or 2000 but it was still far from supercomputer power. It basically took all PCs out of the range of Supercomputer for a while.
Flash forward to today...
2 x 2.5 GHz G5s with two double precision floating point units per cpu. that is a theoretical max of 10 GFlops if you could push a FLOP through each cycle. Each chip also has Altivec which can process 4 32bit FLOPs at once. That's an additional theoretical max of 20 GFlops. You'd never see sustained rates this high.. but we could see a desktop machine within a couple years that was pushing 50 GFlops... maybe 2 dual core chips with altivec running at 4 GHz... with Altivec.