[jarling]

I just read that the Virginia Polytechnic Institute has assembled a supercomputer from 1100 Dual G5s, operating at 7.41 trillion operations per second.

Who in the group wants to drop them a line and see if they'll run Folding@Home for an evening for us

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by jarling:
I just read that the Virginia Polytechnic Institute has assembled a supercomputer from 1100 Dual G5s, operating at 7.41 trillion operations per second.

Who in the group wants to drop them a line and see if they'll run Folding@Home for an evening for us

I would sure like to read that article (and post it at work), any idea where you read it at?

[Scotttheking]

Three main things

Old news.
It's no where near the world's cheapest supercomputer.
No, you can't get them to run fah on it, it's a for hire cluster.

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Three main things

Old news.
It's no where near the world's cheapest supercomputer.
No, you can't get them to run fah on it, it's a for hire cluster.

I found the article:

http://www.cs.vt.edu/site_pages/whatsnews_g5cluster.php

Can't be too old news, they are using Dual G5s which have only been shipping for about a month.
It is supposed to be one of the five fastest supercomputers in the world and for a fraction of the cost of the other 4 in that group which are based on proprietary custom built systems.

[chris v]

So... what does 24 hrs. on that beast cost? Sure would be funny to run through half the keyspace is RC 5 in 2 or 3 days. I would imagine it's several grand a day, though.

CV

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by chris v:
So... what does 24 hrs. on that beast cost? Sure would be funny to run through half the keyspace is RC 5 in 2 or 3 days. I would imagine it's several grand a day, though.

CV

I would bet that it is more like several grand a minute!

[Scotttheking]

I think I remember the number $20mil per year being kicked around, which would translate to about $55k a day.

[Shaktai]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
I think I remember the number $20mil per year being kicked around, which would translate to about $55k a day.

Hmmm! 38.20 a minute. They must get a real good discount on their electricity to run that cheap.

[Chinasaur]

By cheapest I think it was bang for the buck. Yes there are others around that cost less but they do less computations per dollar.

At any rate, regardless of cheapest or no, it's a hell of an accomplishment for a Mac cluster to be where it is in the list for what they spent.

That's really the key to this post.

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by Chinasaur:
By cheapest I think it was bang for the buck. Yes there are others around that cost less but they do less computations per dollar.

At any rate, regardless of cheapest or no, it's a hell of an accomplishment for a Mac cluster to be where it is in the list for what they spent.

That's really the key to this post.

New blurb from cNet.

VIRGINIA TECH'S BUDGET SUPERCOMPUTER FASTER THAN MOST

A supercomputer assembled from 1,100 dual-processor Macintosh G5 PCs by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has achieved performance numbers that put it fourth on the list of the
fastest 500 computers worldwide. The computer's speed of 8.1 teraflops, demonstrated in early testing, is remarkable because the computer was built in about a month for just over $5 million. Most supercomputers of similar performance take years to build and typically cost between $100 million and $250 million. Virginia Tech's
supercomputer also marks the first Macintosh-based machine on the top
500 list in a long time. Researchers noted that the computer's early
speed of 8.1 teraflops only uses 48 percent of the machine's theoretical capacity and said the number may go higher as the computer
is fine-tuned.
CNET, 23 October 2003

VERY INTERESTING!!!

[chris v]

Originally posted by Shaktai:
Hmmm! 38.20 a minute. They must get a real good discount on their electricity to run that cheap.

Okay, can we get 30 team members to each contribute 38 bucks, buy 30 minutes of time on that beast and see what it'll do with RC5? I'm in.

I think it would be worth the money just to see what happened. (I wonder if they have a minimum time alottment, and what the wait is for space)

CV

[off/lang]

Yeah, I'd pay the $38. It would be cool to see what my stats for that day would be like

Hell--I'd even pay for 5 minutes!