Virginia Tech’s new supercomputer cluster, built from 1,100 Power Mac G5s, could be ranked fourth in the world, according to Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee computer scientist who maintains the list of the world’s 500 fastest machines. “The official results for the ranking will not be reported until next month at a supercomputer industry event,” the New York Times reports. “But the Apple-based supercomputer, which is powered by 2,200 IBM microprocessors, was able to compute at 7.41 trillion operations a second, a speed surpassed by only three other ultra-fast computers.” Officials at Virginia Tech said they were still finalizing results and that the final speed number might be significantly higher.
