[Tim Kosch]

I been watching the video about the Virginia Tech supercomputer. On the video they show a delivery of G5's in the standard black box. Does anyone know if these are standard dual G5's or custom built-to-orders? I am curious if they purchased them without video cards, modems, etc. Is there anywhere to find out exactly what their configurations are or what their individual price was? I assume that the $5.2 million price included networking cables, interfaces, racks, etc. since $5.2 million divided by 1,100 comes out to about $4,700 each.

I am not sure what they would do with an extra 1,100 mice, keyboards, etc.

Tim

[CIA]

1,100 mouse and keyboard dutch auction on eBay? I hadn't thought of that aspect before. I bet Apple cut them a deal, and also don't forget that they are a school, so at the minimum, they got education pricing for the machines. Probably more then that though.
Regarding the machines themselves, as far as I have heard, they were all dual 2.0's with a minimum of 4GB of ram, possibly 8GB each. The smallest hard drives available from Apple were installed, and last I knew they were originally running 10.2.7, with the plan to move to 10.3 this past fall. I don't know if they did though.

[billybob128]

they got them in the same box as i got mine

they may have distrobuted the extra mice and keyboards to the older computers that needed new ones around the campus

[thetman]

they added in (vt did) ram to a total of 4gb each and pci-x network cards, other than that they are standard (SD and all) no clue what they did with kb, mouse and all. they did upgrade to panther in nov. i believe and it bosted preformance a fair amount i heard.

[jld]

1100 G5s with 4 gigs of ram each is a lot of computing, but it's not that many computers in terms of sales to Apple. Lots of schools and companies buy thousands of computers all at once. Granted these computers were on top of whatever else VT was buying for lab and office use, but I go to a small school, ~5000 undergrads, and we replace every computer on campus every 2 years, which is about 1200 machines. I doubt 1100 G5s is even a blip on Apple's sales record.

[Eug]

They were standard dual 2.0 builds with Radeon 9600 Pro.

RAM was 4 GB.
Hard drive 160 GB.
They also came with an optical drive, which I believe was the combo drive.

Oh and Dr. V ordered off the AppleStore website.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by Eug:
They were standard dual 2.0 builds with Radeon 9600 Pro.
-

Oh and Dr. V ordered off the AppleStore website.

Yeah, when I first heard that I had to wonder what ran through the mind of the first Apple Store employee to come across that order They probably thought it was a mistake or joke

-Jerry C.

[olePigeon]

5.2 million over 1100 computers comes out to about $4750 per computer.

Since each computer has 4GB of RAM and a $1000 InfiniBand FibreChannel card, I think they got a relatively good deal.

Originally posted by CIA:
1,100 mouse and keyboard dutch auction on eBay? I hadn't thought of that aspect before. I bet Apple cut them a deal, and also don't forget that they are a school, so at the minimum, they got education pricing for the machines. Probably more then that though.
Regarding the machines themselves, as far as I have heard, they were all dual 2.0's with a minimum of 4GB of ram, possibly 8GB each. The smallest hard drives available from Apple were installed, and last I knew they were originally running 10.2.7, with the plan to move to 10.3 this past fall. I don't know if they did though.

[Eug]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
5.2 million over 1100 computers comes out to about $4750 per computer.

Since each computer has 4GB of RAM and a $1000 InfiniBand FibreChannel card, I think they got a relatively good deal.

Dr. V has already said he paid full price for the Power Macs.

I went thru the calculations a while back and it seems that they could have paid full educational prices on the Macs, if they paid street prices for RAM (not Apple RAM prices).

Rumour has it that Apple supplied the RAM, but at great discount (ie. street prices).

They would have also gotten a good package deal on the InfiniBand interconnects.

[thetman]

the students installed the ram(but yes apple could have supplied it), and its a superdrive in each machine

[The Ancient One]

I read somewhere that the $5.2 million included quite a bit more than just the computers. Unfortunately, I can't remember exactly what.

[Eriamjh]

Don't forget the racks and cabling.

Volunteer assembly time is not counted.

[prolix]

Liebert/Emerson provided the racks, power and cooling for the facility. That alone is a big chunk of change, the racks run around 800 each, plus they have a pretty high tech cooling system that creates a vortex of sorts in taht room to keep air moving. Our Liebert rep was talking about it to us one day b/c we are mid-way through a NOC design that will utilize a lot of the same features the VATech NOC uses.

If you want a true feeling for what is involved in putting that room together check this out: http://don.cc.vt.edu/

[Truepop]

hmm each one has a superdrive... I bet they could make some money for their department by offering a DVD copying service.

[typoon]

From what I understand it was 5.2 Million for everything. The racks, the cooling and the computers. Either way it was a good deal for something like that.

[Eug Wanker]

ThinkSecret confirms the Macrumors and Slashdot rumor that Apple is gonna take back the Power Macs in exchange for G5 Xserves. ThinkSecret goes on to claim that Apple is gonna sell them as refurbs:

Apple will reportedly perform a one-to-one swap for the computers, the source said, dispelling rumors that the Power Macs will be distributed across the campus. The machines will instead be refurbished and sold by Apple to resellers, but it's not clear what financial arrangement Virginia Tech has worked out with Apple.

"As you can guess, this'll leave a lot of extra space in all the racks we have," one source said. "We may even add more nodes to the cluster."

[Webscreamer]

They also said the new Xserve G5s support ECC ram and the PowerMac G5s do not.

Could someone explain what it is, and is ECC ram better? Advantages?

Thanks

[ginoledesma]

Error-Correcting Code (ECC) Memory is a kind of memory that has special circuitry to ensure the accuracy of data while passing in and out of memory. It is mainly used in servers that _should not crash_ and require accuracy/stability.

ECC is slower than regular RAM, which is why you won't find it in PowerMac G5s anytime soon. Simply put: more expensive, slower, but more stable.

If you want to know more, head over to this page. It explains ECC clearly without going too technical.

[Webscreamer]

Thanks..very helpful!

[Superchicken]

a 1 to 1 exchange? Well I guess this probably is a great publicity move

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by ginoledesma:
Error-Correcting Code (ECC) Memory is a kind of memory that has special circuitry to ensure the accuracy of data while passing in and out of memory. It is mainly used in servers that _should not crash_ and require accuracy/stability.

ECC is slower than regular RAM, which is why you won't find it in PowerMac G5s anytime soon. Simply put: more expensive, slower, but more stable.

If you want to know more, head over to this page. It explains ECC clearly without going too technical.

I heard that the lack of EEC was meaning that the machine could only be run for small calculations (in supercomuter terms), and was causing major errors on some of the trial calculations...

There was even talk of switching to an XServe (with EEC RAM) setup to improve things...

Anyone know if they got it sorted in the end, or if the machine is still 'limited' in it's usage because of the RAM?

[LightWaver-67]

Other factors to think of that'd bump-up the cost:

- Shipping/Frieght
- Tax...?
- AppleCare warranties or some-sort of service contract...? (yeah, right)

Then again, you'd think they'd get them cheaper because:

- Bulk purchase
- Educational institution
- Good press for Apple

Dunno... I'd hate to review THAT packing slip.