[Rev2Liv]

Remember all the ballyhoo surrounding System X (aka Big Mac) at Virginia Tech? http://www.tcf.vt.edu/systemX.html

Seems like the hardware is still relatively current with 1100 Dual G5 2.3ghz 970FX w/4GB ECC Ram in each node.

I'm also sure that all the key factor is that the software is specifically optimized for System X.

However, I can't help but wonder with PPC support waning, how much longer it is before we see an 1100 node quad or 8 core Xeon based Terascale Cluster with x86 optimization and support. 1100 nodes equals either 4400 or 8800 individual processors!! Wow!!!

With that much firepower, i wonder how much it would eclipse the current 12.25 Tflops achieved by 2200 970FX processors!!!!

So I can't wait to see the next Terascale project powered by Mac OSX and INTeL.

[pantie sniffer]

Good!

[mduell]

There are lots of Intel based systems that have passed System X in performance.

BYU's Marylou4 cluster (2520 of the old 2.66Ghz Xeons) is 2 spots ahead (at #45) of VT's System X.

System X was very good for getting VT and Apple's name out there because the G5 is very efficient at the benchmark used to rank supercomputers. But I doubt we'll see any more supercomptuers/clusters built with Macs in the near future; It's cheaper to go with another brand now that Apple is using the same chips as Dell/HP/IBM.

[Waragainstsleep]

There was a bigger Xserve G5 based cluster built, but it belongs to a Military contractor so I guess supercomputer lists are not high on their priority list.

The next monster computers will surely be running the Cell I would think. Its based on PPC like the G5, so should be good for the same sort of tasks, but now we are talking 9 cores per chip. And I believe I saw a PCI-E card which included several Cells for rendering purposes, so I guess you can squeeze a whole lotta power into a small space, which thrashes the hell out of the overheads (System X had to build a building for it as I recall), especially the aircon bill.